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IF YOU WERE on Facebook in recent months, you likely saw an event entitled Movie on the Beach Dublin pop up on your newsfeed.

The event was scheduled to take place tonight on an undisclosed beach in Dublin and over 60,000 people had clicked attending on the event.

Movie on the Beach is coming to DUBLIN! Something different, not many tickets available as we don’t want to ruin the concept! The beach will be announced in the coming weeks.

While details like price or location were never announced, the organisers of the event did invite people to fill out a Google Form “to get priority on tickets once they go on sale”.

All interested parties were required to provide their name, date of birth, home address, mobile number and e-mail adddress.

Hmm.

Google Forms Google Forms

As October 14th approached, however, no official information about the event seemed to be forthcoming.

Many people began to ask whether or not it was actually going ahead or not.

And this morning, the event was quietly deleted from Facebook, dashing the dreams of 60,000 Dubliners in the process.

So, was the event ever going ahead?

Dublin City Council confirmed to DailyEdge.ie that they had not granted permission for any such event to take place.

Dublin City Council are not aware of this event. Such an event would require permission from Dublin City Council. To date, Dublin City Council has not received an application for this event.

Couple that with the complete lack of information regarding the event and we would say that it was nothing more than a Facebook hoax.

As for that slightly dodgy Google Form?

The Data Protection Commission told DailyEdge.ie that people should always be wary of giving personal information to organisations that may or may not be legit.

The consistent advice of this Office is that individuals need to be vigilant when providing any kind of personal data such as name, address and date of birth. Where possible, they should verify the authenticity of the organisation in question and ensure that the purpose of gathering this personal data sought is lawful and in compliance with the Data Protection Acts.

The Office also advises that individuals look for a privacy statement by the organisers in question stating why the information is being collected, its purpose, and how long it will be retained for. They should also examine the terms and conditions of the competition as well which would provide indications perhaps of what their data may be used for in terms of marketing, etc.

Noted.

We’ll watch films on the beach another day, Dublin.

But until then — don’t trust everything you see on Facebook.

Additional reporting by David Elkin 

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