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Even Duggar Family Members Keep Falling For Social Media Accounts Pretending To Be One Of Them

By Steph Bazzle
Published on: 05:42 PST, Aug 31, 2017

The Duggar family has very strict social media rules for their unmarried children, even into adulthood. The most recently married Duggar daughter, Joy Anna Forsyth, has chosen not to have personal social media pages, instead sharing with her husband, Austin. However, an old account on Twitter, in which a fan role-plays the young woman, has now tricked at least two other members of the Duggar family.

The Twitter account was created in 2014 and updated this year to reflect Joy Anna’s married name, instead of Duggar. There’s also an accompanying Instagram account. Both are pretty popular — the Twitter account has over 16 thousand followers, and the Instagram, which bears only a few photos, all from Joy’s wedding or since, has over 11 thousand.

However, the official Instagram account for Joy and Austin is here, and the pair share a Facebook page here. Both of these were announced and linked by other Duggar family members on official accounts. As for any others, the Duggar family’s official Instagram account made an announcement in February 2015, listing the official accounts.

“Because some ppl were wondering…
ONLY TRUE DUGGAR ACCOUNTS:
@duggarfam
@joshduggar
@annaduggar
@jillmdillard
@derickdillard
@jessaseewald
@ben_seewald
@amyduggar
ALL OTHERS ARE FAKES.
None of us have secondary accounts.
This is it.
Any new Duggar accounts in the future will be announced from @duggarfam and followed by @duggarfam. If @duggarfam doesn’t follow them, they’re a FAKE.”

Though the Duggar family has introduced additional accounts since then, this is a clear statement on their behalf that an account purporting to be Joy Anna Duggar since 2014 is a fake.

Also, in September 2014, Joy wouldn’t have had her 17th birthday yet, and again, the Duggar family has really strict rules about internet access and social media. Jessa Duggar Seewald confirmed this a month after the official announcement on the Duggar family account, specifically confirming that Joy did not, at that time, have social media.

However, the fact that the accounts are fake and have been denounced by the Duggar family hasn’t stopped two members of the family from being tricked by them.

Last month, Amy Duggar King, Jim Bob Duggar’s niece and Joy Forsyth’s cousin, retweeted a post from the fake Joy Anna account, and tagged the account in another tweet.

Now, on her official, real accounts, Joy Anna has announced her pregnancy, and the rest of the Duggar family has been expressing well wishes.

However, one family member apparently forgot that Joy is sharing social media with her husband, and that she couldn’t have a Twitter account while living in the Duggar home.

Derick Dillard, husband to Joy’s sister Jill, tweeted his congratulations to Joy and Austin — tagging the old account the Duggar family long ago denounced as fake. Oops!

It’s not clear what makes this particular account so believable. Though it retweets Duggar family members and reshares photos from official Duggar accounts, the same can be said of dozens of other fake accounts. Yes, these exist — there are multiple fake accounts for Jana Duggar, and a fake Instagram account for Jinger Duggar Vuolo got a lot of attention during her courtship and marriage. Even Jinger’s wedding director and photographers were preyed upon by that one. These got a new surge of interest after police reports were released in 2015 showing Josh Duggar had been accused of molesting several young girls.

Several of the accounts capitalized on this — one pretending to be Johanna Duggar, for instance (who was only 9-years-old at the time and certainly would not have had a Twitter account) asked people to stop speaking ill of Josh’s behavior, saying, “Jackson and I are really crying because no one likes our family anymore.”

If social media accounts are even fooling extended members of the Duggar family, how can you be certain what’s real? Look for verified checkmarks, new photos (especially selfies) that haven’t appeared on other official social media accounts, and for the account to be linked or followed by the main family account, which on both Twitter and Instagram is @DuggarFam.

[Featured Image by Duggar Family/Instagram]

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