Alarm at the Portal: The Hijacking of Freemasonry
There is an Alarm at the Portal. Cowans & Intruders are hijacking Freemasonry and to prove it, I contacted one of these fake mason scammers!
Now, I am not being hyperbolic, I am dead serious. As Masons, we have all taken an obligation to protect the Craft from Cowans and Intruders, to defend our Brothers in their absence as well as in their presence.
You, as an Individual Mason, are critical to stopping these hijackers. The power to stop them is in the volume of brethren taking action. But, it’s easy to play your part and only takes a few seconds.
But first, let me cover what these hijackers are doing to our Craft:
Identity Theft,
Extortion
Misrepresentation
‘Trademark’ & ‘Brand’ theft
Piracy
If you don’t feel like this is a big issue or is important, you must ask yourself how seriously you take your obligations in Freemasonry. Do you care about stopping your brethren & fellows from these insidious attacks of these cowans?
In Australia, each year AU $3.1bn is lost to scams & fraud, based upon what is being reported. In the USA, it’s US $10bn that’s being lost.
What’s worse is that’s only what’s being reported to Authorities. The actual losses are far higher.
Most of those who are highly susceptible to these scams and the biggest demographic of those being scammed are people aged over 55. The typical demographic of a Mason.
With scams now centring around technology, and everyone over the age of 55 didn’t grow up with modern technology. There is a large knowledge gap around what is vs isn’t legitimate. Hence it’s like shooting fish in a barrel for these scammers.
Do you want your brother to be scammed or have his identity stolen?
Let’s start with what is happening.
As Freemasons, we have recently discovered the power of social media. We are posting photos and sharing stories with the world about how great Freemasonry is.
This is not to say we should stop because people are doing bad things with our content, rather, we need to respond and take action to stop them when they do. We must continue to spread masonic light to dispel darkness, not retreat into the shadows out of fear.
These Cowans are taking our photos, creating fake profiles and pretending to be you. They add your fellow brethren as friends, then attempt to steal their images as well.
Once they’ve created a fake profile, they are posting and sharing masonic content on Facebook (some of it is good, but it’s just stolen content anyway). This builds their credibility and their following. They use what seems to be legitimate content to make it seem like they’re a Mason and who they say they are.
But then it turns. Their Facebook posts take a dark turn towards scamming you and those who are legitimately interested in Freemasonry.
What is worse, many of these scammers are creating fake Grand Lodge pages and posting pretending to be them.
So what’s the scam?
What they do, is get people who legitimately want to become Masons, those who aren’t as savvy to see through this. After, they’ve already established credibility through seemingly legitimate posts. When you message them, they then start you on stealing your identity, asking for your personal information, and photos, and recording a video. They then play on the misinformation about Freemasonry and the Illuminati!
Ok, I said Illuminati, Darren you must be crazy. Just ignore it, this is stupid
No, one of the biggest issues with attracting good men to Masonry is the public misunderstanding and conspiracy garbage surrounding the Illuminati and Freemasonry.
Then, these scammers are playing off that, stealing our identity and using our name, brand, and images. They’re pretending to be real Freemasons to scam, extort and steal people’s identities.
Why should we do something, is this a problem
Ask yourself this, if McDonalds or Coca-Cola had this happen to them? Where fake pages pretending to be them or their senior executives were created and circulated on Facebook. Where they promoted contact them to win Free McDonalds/Coca-Cola, Money, Holidays etc. Do you think they’d ignore it? No, they’d be all over it and they already are. They have teams and staff dedicated to shutting this down.
The real problem is, that Cowans and Intruders are hijacking Freemasonry for insidious reasons. They are doing it and continue to grow because it’s working and they’re making money from it. They are destroying our Craft and turning good men away from Freemasonry because at first glance to the uninformed person (who we want to inform about legitimately about Freemasonry) are just passing by us and writing us off as the conspiracy society makes us out to be.
This is the 2024 version Nigerian Prince Scam.
These hijackers are creating darkness where there should be masonic light.
We have all taken obligations to defend and protect the Craft from the insidious attacks of the cowans!
If you are not taking action to stop this, you are complicit in the problem.
But I am just one Brother, it’s Grand Lodge’s Problem, and my help won’t make any difference. Facebook should do something
Let’s make a few things clear.
Masonic Light is to dispel the darkness of mental and moral ignorance and bring to view the sublime truths of morality and virtue, which is ever the object of Freemasonry to teach.
It is every brother’s Masonic duty and obligation to protect the craft from cowans & intruders. You must dispel the darkness and protect the Craft and your Brothers.
So, here is why every single Brother needs to take action. I will tell you exactly what do to in a moment because it’s something that only takes a few seconds.
Firstly, for Facebook to do anything, there needs to be a volume of complaints and reports to them about these scammers. They can’t step in and take action if they don’t know it’s occurring.
If there is 1 complaint against a page or profile, Facebook won’t take action. If there are 1,000 complaints. Then it gets taken seriously.
Facebook and other social media companies have a serious problem with their platforms being used for scams & fraud. They know it’s light killing cockroaches or fighting medusa. The more you cut off, the more they come back.
But we have the act, otherwise, if we don’t we continue to fight an uphill battle to dispel the misinformation about Freemasonry that’s already in the public view. If we want Freemasonry to prosper, we have to make sure that what is promoted online is ‘regular’.
Do you want a future where the only conversations you have with the general public about Freemasonry are focused on explaining what it’s not or correcting the misinformation they’ve got from the internet?
How do you know if it’s fake?
The three key things to know whether it’s taken or not are:
If the post is promoting you to contact them via WhatsApp, Telegram or any other messaging service; it’s probably fake, but you have to check:
Click on the Page Name
Scroll through their page and look for :
- Asking to message them on WhatsApp, Messenger or another service
- Mentioning the Illuminati and the benefits of joining
- Inviting you to join
- Promoting or selling Masonic Items, like watches
- Repeating the same post several times
- Repeating the same images in multiple posts with different text
- Text that doesn’t match the photo (text about a 3rd degree, but pictures of another type of Masonic meeting)
- Using images from multiple jurisdictions, but claiming them as their own
- Images that conflict with their ‘regularity’ — such as Co-Masonry images on what is meant to be a regular Grand Lodge
- Posting about other Jurisdiction’s events, when they didn’t attendClick on View Profile, the About tab, then “Who’s engaging this week”
- Does it mention “Illuminati”
- Was the page created in the last year or two
Now you know it’s fake — what do we do?
If you work in Social Media, Cyber Security or Trademark / IP / Brand Law — please reply to this email if you would be happy to help with developing a bigger and more permanent solution to this problem.
For every individual Mason, here is what you can do to help fight darkness:
Click on the Page Name
Click on View Profile
Click on the Three Dots
Click “Report Profile”, then Select “Fake Page” and Done
Click “Report Profile” again, Select “Fraud or Scam”, then “Asking Me for Financial Information” or “Other” and Done
Click “Report Profile”, then select “Intellectual Property”
Please share this article as far and wide as possible. We have to work together to stop the hijacking of Freemasonry and the spread of Masonic Darkness by Cowans & Intruders.