Ida Nowakowska published a series of screenshots with disgusting, alleged articles about her on InstaStories. Most of them are false information about the dancer's death and former host of “Pytania na breakfast”. One of the fake news shows a celebrity as the heroine of a sex scandal. In the photo which is photomontageyou can see a woman with Nowakowska's face, wearing only underwear, taking drugs. A naked man stands behind her. A photograph that was generated using artificial intelligence or a photo editing program, was embellished with a scandalous title: “Ida Nowakowska: This is the most humiliating day of my life. Yesterday's news shocked all of Poland.” And below there was a note: “No one expected this.”
In short, Ida Nowakowska became a victim of cybercrime. But not only her – so do we. Each fake news was decorated with the logo of the Gazeta.pl portal, of which the Plotek website is a part. Ida Nowakowska announces legal action. “This is vile. I'm giving this case to my lawyer,” she thundered under one of the screenshots showing fake news about her. Gazeta.pl also reported this and similar cases to the prosecutor's office. However, before we inform you – our readers – about the further stages of this matter, we would like to warn you. We explain below how to recognize similar scams and how to respond to them.
Fraudsters impersonate Gazeta.pl. How to recognize them?
Fraudsters impersonating well-known Polish websites, including Gazeta.pl, have become exceptionally clever. They create entire articles that resemble those on our websites. There is the logo of the Gazeta.pl portal, as well as the entire visual environment that resembles that of the portal. There are no horses on this onec. Scammers even sign articles with the names of our editors. Most often, they use the personal data of our journalist Natalia Pacholczyk, who, due to the number of false reports using her name, decided not to sign her articles anymore.
Scammers also create entire fictitious interviews with celebrities. These are most often carried out by Kuba Wojewódzki. Then, in these procured interviews, they smuggle in content that they are supposed to promote, among others: slimming products, dietary supplements, various questionable drugs and investment activities that were supposedly intended to help stars get rich.
In addition to made-up interviews, there is also plenty of fake news on the Internet with the Gazeta.pl logo, in which scammers write about the star's death or beatings. There is no shortage of other sensational titles about dismissals and arrests. Such content is not uncommon they contain stolen photos that are altered with the help of AI. In this way, the fraudsters used and processed for their own purposes not only the photos of Ida Nowakowska, but also, among others, Wojciech Cejrowski, Dorota WellmanKuba Wojewódzki, Małgorzata Rozenek-Maidan, Marcin ProkopRobert Lewandowski and Iga Świątek. Photographs of politicians, including: Sławomir Mentzen.
How not to be deceived?
First of all, let's pay attention to website addresses. Texts published on Gazeta.pl start as follows: dzienniksci.gazeta.pl, plotek.pl, next.gazeta.pl, sport.pl, edziecko.pl, etc. Links intended to deceive readers start e.g. .from realtimenow.shop; lavend3rdrea9.xyz; lave7derjou7ney.quest etc.
Secondly, the fabricated articles contain numerous typos, linguistic and stylistic errors. There are also mentions of the names of imaginary doctors or specialists (their authenticity can be easily verified online). All this should make us suspicious. Despite the continuous development of AI tools, it is quite easy to notice repeated language errors, most likely resulting from errors in automatic translations into Polish.
What is phishing?
The activities described above are a cybercrime called phishing. “Phishing emails are crafted by cybercriminals to look authentic, but are actually fake. They may try to trick you into revealing confidential information, contain a link to a website that spreads malware (criminals often use similar website names to authentic ones), or have an infected attachment” – according to the website gov.pl.
How to respond to such content? First of all, they should not be ignored, but reported. How to report a website that impersonates another sender or tries to steal your data? Just go to the website of the CERT Polska computer incident response team (incident.cert.pl), complete online short form and attach a suspicious message. Persons who have reasonable suspicion that they have been a victim of fraud or have detected fraud should immediately report this fact to the police or prosecutor's office. appropriate to your place of residence.
If you see such a post on social media, please report it as false information, impersonation or attempted fraud on the given platform (usually these are the “three dots” in the upper right part of the post, which you need to click and then select the “report post” option). You can send us such false articles or posts at news@grupagazeta.pl.
We reported this case to the prosecutor's office. And what next?
In June 2024, we submitted a notification to the prosecutor's office regarding repeated impersonation of the Gazeta.pl portal and signing forged articles with the name and surname of Natalia Pacholczyk. The case is under consideration. We contacted Ida Nowakowska to take joint steps in this matter.