Facebook Page admins beware of “Verified Page” scam

An incredible story from interior design website Freshome.com proves to be a stark warning for Facebook Page administrators.

Many Page admins, including us, spend months and years building up a fan base on our social media pages. Starting from zero, some pages make it to millions and millions of fans.

So you probably don’t want it all disappear within the blink of an eye. Which is what [nearly] happened to interior design site Freshome.com who, at the time, has a Page with over 1 million Likes.

They were hit by a scam that targeted Facebooks “Verified Page” feature that allows Page admins to verify their Page to show to viewers that the Page is the official outlet of their brand (much in the same way you can have a verified Twitter feed.)

The scam worked by a scammer setting up a fake Facebook Profile with the name “Verified Page” (yes, this is reminiscent of phishing scammers setting up profiles called “Facebook Security” in order to dupe people into handing over their account credentials.)

This fake profile – equipped with official looking profile picture – then makes a request to become an admin of the Facebook Page. The request, given the profile name and picture, appears on first glance to perhaps be the way Facebook verify pages.

Since the actual method Facebook use to verify pages is – to most people – unknown, many Page admins are likely to fall for the ruse and accept the admin request.

And the admins at Freshome.com fell for it, handing over admin control to the fake “Verified Page” account, owned by a scammer. They quickly saw their popular Facebook Page become unpublished, and their own admin accounts disabled.

However in this case perhaps the most remarkable thing is what occurred next, which is best summarised by the below graphic that shows two messages the scammer sent to the original admin of the Page after they fell for the scam.

See the post on Facebook here.

True to their word, the Facebook Page was soon in its rightful control and re-published.

Of course you may not be so lucky, so if you get any requests for another account to take admin control of your Facebook Page, DECLINE! No matter how official the request appears. If Facebook decide to verify your page, they do not need admin control of your Page.