Every year, unofficial or fake Freshers and Welcome events/groups appear across social media. We’ve already seen some and most of you haven’t even got your results yet! People pretend to be UEA and create fake events to take your money. Often these claim to be the only 'official' Welcome/Freshers events or groups for University of East Anglia students.

You need to know how to spot a fake event if you see one so you can protect your pennies and your personal data, and join the brilliant official events instead!

The key things to remember are: 

• UEA Welcome events are called just that - we use Welcome Festival instead of Freshers to refer to our events, so if you see 'Freshers', you know it's not official.
• Are they trying to panic you into buying tickets? If so, it could be fake.
• Official events from us will always feature University branding, so you can expect to see either our logo, uea(su), or the UEA logo.

No tickets have gone on sale yet. We’ll give a specific date closer to the time, and you’ll see it all over our social media and in your inbox. 

We're still busy planning Welcome/Freshers activities, so make sure to follow us on Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter and Instagram to keep up to date with the latest news. 

How to spot a 'fake' event

Unofficial' events or pages may:

• Use panic tactics to scare you. They might make you feel like you’ll miss out if you don't buy their tickets straight away.
• Use branding that isn't recognisable or consistent. Or they might steal ours or the University's logo to put on their branding. But it will probably be of low quality.
• Change the location of an event suddenly or not have a location at all.
• Some events may advertise entry to multiple venues for one price. But be careful as a lot of these venues, particularly bars, will be free entry anyway. This might mean that you’re paying for nothing!

What's so bad about these 'unofficial' events or pages?

These events are not guaranteed to be just for students, safe, or necessarily legal. Sometimes they're just completely made up to make a private company some money or get hold of your data.

Here at the UEA SU, our events have a number of safety elements like:

On hand in a safe space in the Hive, our dedicated student welfare Alcohol Impact Crew are ready with phone chargers, biscuits, water, and a lot of sound advice. And for the ill or injured, the marvelous St. John First Aiders are available.

If you are worried about spiking, feel uncomfortable, have a problem, or feel unwell, please ask any staff for help. We are here to give you a Good Night Out.

Please ask for a spikey at the bar and try to reuse it if possible. We will continue to routinely remove any abandoned drinks.

None of these safety elements are part of unofficial events. 

Unofficial social media pages aren't always necessarily a bad thing, especially if you know they're not affiliated. They may be run by students and be used to introduce you to others on your course or in your college. Just make sure to fact check anything you read on these. 

However, other groups are run by external events companies. These companies are trying to make money from events that aren't run by us, your college or the University, as well as collect your data.

Any questions? 

We appreciate that this can be an overwhelming time. There’s a lot of information being given to you - and the last thing we want to do is worry you! Follow this guidance and you’ll be fine.

And if you have any questions, you can message us on Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter and Instagram, or email us at union.info@uea.ac.uk.