Kym Marsh believes that stealing a person’s identity on social media "should be made a criminal offence" after she discovered somebody impersonating her eight-year-old daughter on Instagram.
The ‘Coronation Street’ actress was horrified to discover someone posting in the name of her child Polly – whose dad is actor Jamie Lomas – on the photo and video sharing app and even though the user had signified it was a "role play account" she wants a law to stop people from impersonating others online.
Writing in her column in the new issue of OK! magazine, she said: "Last week we discovered that someone was pretending to be Polly online via a fake Instagram account. They used #rp to show it’s a role play account but that doesn’t make any difference. They’re still using my daughter’s name and my daughter’s image. It’s identity theft. Why would anyone want to pretend to be an eight year old? It’s a dangerous game and draws parallels with the stories we uncovered on my upcoming investigative BBC show ‘For Love Or Money’, which focuses on romance fraud. This is what scares me about the internet – there’s no control over anything. It should be made a criminal offence to steal people’s identity to set up fake accounts, particularly when children are the victims."
Away from her social media worries, Kym – who has two other children, 23-year-old David and 21-year-old daughter Emilie, from her relationship with Dave Cunliffe – saw Polly return to school last week and although the youngster was "a bit apprehensive" about going into a new term she was fine once she met her new teacher.
The former Hear’Say singer – who is a grandmother to daughter Emilie’s baby son Teddy – shared: "Polly started back at school and looked so smart in her uniform, which I organised at the last minute, as usual. She was a bit apprehensive about going into year four but was really excited to see her friends and had such a good first day back – it helped that she likes her new teacher. She’s having school dinners again which I’m quite pleased about because even though she happily eats mountains of vegetables at home, she used to only ever want a ham sandwich every single day in her packed lunch!"
Kym Marsh: Fake social media accounts need to be stopped
