How to Spot and Avoid Scams on Facebook and Instagram
As someone with a public presence, it’s important to spot scams and attempts to access your Facebook or Instagram accounts.
In this lesson, we’ll go over some behaviors to be suspicious of, tell you about some of the more frequently used scamming techniques and offer a few more tips to staying safe on Facebook and Instagram.
The site’s popularity makes it ripe for cybercriminals. With so many active users, fraudsters have a vast pool of potential victims at their fingertips. Even if only a fraction of fraud attempts work, that’s a pretty big payday for any scammer.
According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, financial losses from social media scams exceed hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
Things to watch out for
- People you don’t know personally asking for money.
- Anyone asking you to pay a fee to apply for a job.
- Un-verified Pages claiming to represent a large organization or public figure.
- People asking you to move your conversation off Facebook to a less public or less secure setting, such as a separate email.
- People asking you to send them money or gift cards to receive a reward.
- Anyone claiming to be a friend or relative in an emergency.
- People who misrepresent where they are located.
- Messages or posts with poor spelling and grammar.
- People or accounts directing you to claim a prize.
Thank you Facebook
KPAX news 12/13/2021 reports of a lady that received message from one of her facebook friends stating she had won a Facebook award of $50,000.00 and she that was sure that her friend had won as well. She gave her a link to go to and check if she was a winner. Well yes she had indeed won $50,000.00 award, and then the scam began with her first notice asking her to please send $500.00 to insure the mailing of check ($50,000.00) and then please send $5,000.00 to pay the taxes – to which she did pay using Apple gift cards. She received a third request for money for another reason, and at that time she contacted her friend asking her if about this windfall, to learn that her friend had been hacked and it all was a scam. This occurred in Missoula and she is presently out $5,500.00.