An Irish tourist attraction’s Facebook page has been flooded with racy pictures and videos over the past week after hackers took over the page.
The Irish Heritage National Park in Wexford’s Facebook page, which has approximately 36,000 followers, was hacked last week — with those looking to see anything from the park now being inundated with suspicious links to adult video sites, as well as sexually suggestive videos from Indian TV shows.
Some of the links shared by the page following the hacking include ‘X Girl Sexy’ and ‘hot movie girls’ with posts receiving over 1,000 likes and three comments of a similar nature — all by similarly fake accounts.
It is understood that the admins of the Irish Heritage National Park were locked out of their Facebook page in November of last year, and abandoned the page completely in January, following reported inaction from Facebook’s parent company Meta. They have since started a new page.
However, the page has been active since February 17 — with the page sharing what has been described by the real Irish Heritage National Park as ‘illegal pornographic content.’
After exhausting all options with Facebook, it’s been reported that they have now made an official report to media regulators Coimisiún na Meán.
Over 24 videos have since been posted to the site, with hashtags attached to the site including the 2022 World Cup, Bollywood movies and basketball, as well as current events such as the ongoing crisis in Gaza — likely to try and maximise engagement.
‘The Irish National Heritage Park was locked out of its main Facebook page on November 13th, 2023,’ a statement from the Irish Heritage National Park told Extra.ie. ‘We engaged with Facebook to try re-establishing admin access to our page for a number of weeks, but to no avail.
‘On January 12th, 2024, we had no option but to start a new Facebook page . On February 17th it was brought to our attention that our old Facebook page had been re-activated and now contained illegal pornographic content.
‘We reported same to Facebook on Saturday February 17th. On Monday February 19th as the abandoned page remained active with this illegal content, we reported the matter directly to Coimisiun na Mean.
‘On the advice of the commission, we have endeavoured to engage with Facebook, again with no resolution of this issue . Coimisiun na Mean are looking into the matter. This has been extremely upsetting for all concerned ,please be assured we are doing all we can to resolve the matter.’
Extra.ie have contacted Coimisiún na Meán and the Irish Heritage National Park for comment. A Meta spokesperson said that they are looking into the matter.