Daniel O'Donnell has urged his fans to be vigilant of social media scams using his image.

The Donegal singer told Lunchtime Live that pages pretending to be him contact fans on Facebook asking them to follow malicious links or to send money.

"On the Facebook page, when posts go up about different things that maybe I’m doing, these people set up another page pretending it’s me, answering comments that people put up," Mr O'Donnell said.

"Recently, we just put up about the shows in Killarney that we’re doing at the end of August, people were commenting, then these fake pages would be immediately saying, ‘If you want information just click on the link below’."

Meet and greet links

Mr O'Donnell said fake pages contact fans to sell them fake tickets or fraudulent meet and greet opportunities.

"I meet people after every show and there's never anything that needs to be paid," he said.

Fans have also received friend requests from pages using Mr O'Donnell's likeness.

"I don't go on Facebook myself - I will never send a friend request to anybody," he said.

"People are getting scammed left, right and centre - be vigilant and careful."

In other instances, scammers have used the singer's image in fake charity fundraisers.

Daniel O'Donnell, August 2013, Alamy

Online scams targeting fans are a recurring issue for Mr O'Donnell and he believes they are becoming more common.

"This has been going on for a good while and it’s getting worse instead of better," he said.

"The people in the office are continually saying this is fake and trying to report them.

"The awful thing about it is they cannot trace the people."

Mr O'Donnell encouraged fans to only buy tickets through his official website - danielodonnell.org.

Feature image shows Daniel O'Donnell, June 2020, Alamy.