Sophisticated Scammers Are Targeting Readers and Writers on Substack: Here’s What You Need to Know
Please Stop Following Keanu Reeves or Other Celebrities for Your Sanity, Safety, and Security on Substack as No Celebrity Will Subscribe to Your Newsletters.
Dear friends, today I felt compelled to write about something important and urgent concern that came to my attention in the last few days. These sophisticated scams have been serious issues for me as they have affected me personally in 2022, my readers on Medium, and many others in the writing community and other communities. Scammers are everywhere. They are getting smarter and now target Substack, our peaceful and beloved community.
You might think, “I would never fall for a scam,” but here is the problem: they keep getting smarter and are not just targeting random people randomly. They specifically go after certain writers and readers on platforms like Medium and Substack by profiling them, like their age groups, hobbies, interactions, readers, and other factors. Their tactics are disturbingly effective. For example, recent romance scams exceeded over half a billion dollars. There is no single day I don’t hear about a person being scammed. It saddens me deeply.
Over the last year, my account has been cloned many times on Medium. Fake profiles with my name and photo tricked innocent readers—some of whom had PhDs—into believing they were interacting with me. These impersonators used trust as a weapon, luring people into scams that cost them money, personally identifiable data, and peace of mind. Sadly, several innocent readers got scammed. Some of them publicly wrote about their awful experiences.
When I and others raised the alarm, Medium’s response was disappointing. That was heartbreaking. Today, I wrote a comprehensive story on Medium, so I will not go into those details. If you are interested, you can read the story I link below. If you don’t have access to Medium I also published it on my website linked to it.
Please Stop Following Keanu Reeves for Your Sanity, Safety, and Security
Why This Matters for Substack Writers and Readers
If you are a writer or reader on Substack, do not assume you are safe. Scammers follow engagement patterns, and they know where active communities are. They impersonate public figures, comment under posts, subscribe to newsletters to gather information, then use Substack Notes to deepen their connections and finally scam innocent readers and writers.
I have seen it happen multiple times. In the last few weeks, my subscribers contacted me on Substack Notes with excitement, saying, “Guess what, Keanu Reeves subscribed to my account, and we are having friendly chats. He is awesome!”
As their friends or mentors, it was a difficult situation for me to give them bad news and disappoint them, saying they were followed by a fake celebrity. As the number of such inquiries increased, I feel obliged to write this short newsletter today to inform you and to prevent scams among my subscribers.
As I was scammed in 2022, losing one-third of my retirement funds, I know how painful it could be for anyone. If I, as a tech professional managing cybersecurity platforms, can be scammed, anyone can, so please don’t underestimate this message.
Today, our good friend,
, also wrote about her recent experience as she was almost scammed on Substack. Deirdre also has a strong tech and psychology background. Last year, another friend, , who trusted me got scammed because she thought that the sophisticated offer was from me. She wrote about her poignant experience. There were many more, but the most striking one was a well-educated Fullbright scholar and a professor in the US. He is my age. He got scammed and wrote about it with humility on Medium with minute details, which Medium censored by sweeping the dirt under the carpet, as mentioned in my latest post.I won’t bore you with details, and my goal is not to scare you but to invite you to be careful and vigilant, as there are too many unknowns. They keep upgrading their strategies and tactics so it can be easy to fall into their new sophisticated traps. We cannot underestimate the power and terrible implications of these organized scams on our community. I don’t want anyone to suffer from preventable scams.
How to Protect Yourself and Your Readers as a Writer
I’d like to give you a few well-proven approaches. They are simple and effective.
1 - Do not engage with suspicious accounts. If someone famous follows you, subscribes to your newsletters, interacts with your work in comments, or DM you in Notes, verify their identity before responding.
2 - Check for warning signs. Fake profiles usually have no posts; they have generic names or recently created accounts. Some use the names of well-known writers here or celebrities to make their profiles attractive. They act very kindly and in a friendly manner to develop relationships with you. In recent examples, the relationship was romantic and targeted at women over 40. Some target the elderly, especially widows.
3 - Report and block. If you spot a scam account, take action immediately. The faster they get flagged, the less damage they can do to our Substack community.
4 - Warn your audience. If you have subscribers and reading friends, let them know about scams you hear or read about so they do not fall victim. Some readers are very new to Substack, so if someone duplicates your account as they did mine, they can fall into the trap. Please educate your readers, as I have been doing for several years now.
5 - Keep security tight. Avoid sharing sensitive details in emails or Note DMs, and be cautious of links from strangers as they might bring malicious software to your computers or mobile phones.
Privacy TIP: Recently, Substack identified a significant privacy risk that could also cause cybersecurity issues, so they warned all writers who gave their phone numbers in their invoices. I fell into this trap, but I am grateful to Substack, which asked me to update it via Stripe. It is disappointing that Stripe, by default, gives phone numbers to subscribers. So, scammers who target a person will not hesitate to pay $5 to access a vulnerable writer’s account. If you are a writer, please update your privacy details on Stripe.
I have seen too many people get hurt by scams that could have been prevented with awareness. So, please consider this newsletter a reminder to stay vigilant and protect yourself from scammers.
Scammers evolve, but so can we. By staying informed and looking out for each other, we can make it much harder for them to succeed. If you have encountered anything suspicious lately, feel free to share your experience in the comments because the more we talk about this, the better we protect each other.
Account cloning also happens on Substack. For example, last year, they cloned Tim Denning here, so I wrote a community bulletin about it.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a happy and healthy life.
I am pleased my two publications became Subsack bestsellers thanks to supportive readers of my work. I wrote a detailed story about it on Medium, sharing my unusual strategy, which can guide some freelance writers. It is titled How My 2 Publications Became Substack Bestsellers in 8 Months Without Even Aiming for It. I will write a case study to guide freelance writers better soon.
To celebrate this milestone, I give a 20% discount to freelance writers who earn income and a 50% discount to health and wellness readers to benefit from my exclusive health and wellness content and additional support services through Substack Notes, my Slack workspace, or email for Tier 2 services of Substack Mastery Boost Pilot program. In addition, new subscribers who join one publication will get complimentary access to another.
I don't blame people fall into the deepfakes as sometimes when I watch them on YouTube I even believe they are real. New sophisticated AI tools made them easy to create. Even teenagers now have access to these tools and create realistic videos of celebrities. We cannot talk enough on this cyber-security issue. I checked Substack and there are still various profiles using Keanu Reeves. I wonder why Substack does not delete them. Maybe it deletes them and they keep coming. Who knows! Thanks for educating us Dr Yildiz. I had a few scam accounts approached me and with the insights I gained from you they couldn't do anything to me.
As someone who has been scammed multiple times due to my inherent trust in others, this story struck a deep chord with me. I experienced something similar on Medium when my account was first cloned—I felt awful, my trust in the platform shattered. https://medium.com/illumination/wtf-i-was-cloned-on-medium-and-im-intensely-concerned-as-a-friend-of-medium-bf8192603daa But it didn’t stop there. My account was cloned multiple times, and when I decided to take a stand against the scammers, what did Medium do? Instead of support, they restricted my distribution, burying my stories from real readers. My earnings plummeted from $500 to $20. This is how Medium treats authentic writers and engaged readers. It was one of the key reasons I chose to downgrade my FoM account, something I was once passionate about. While Medium presents itself as a champion of writers, its actions suggest otherwise. Silencing authentic voices and sweeping issues under the rug—especially by banning meta stories from the paywall—raises serious concerns about its commitment to transparency and fairness. Thank you for raising awareness with your educational stories and newsletters on both platforms. We need to work as a community to fight against scammers. Arrogance will not work. Anyone can be scammed.