Scams on Facebook are not going anywhere. The platform is sadly rife with a variety of different online scams looking to defraud the platform’s massive user base.
We take a look at 4 particular scams that look as if they’re going to be prolific throughout 2022.
Facebook has been promising for years to stop scammers from advertising on their platform. They haven’t done a good job. We still frequently see a number of scams reaching Facebook users via their platform’s Sponsored Ads feature.
Most notably these scams include fake “get-rich-quick” scams that lure Facebook users to the latest “get-rich” system – often exploiting the names of popular cryptocurrencies – whereby users can apparently make tons of money by signing up. Of course that isn’t true and what really happens is that users are lured to shady, unregulated trading websites where nearly everyone will ultimately lose any money they deposit into them.
These fake ads (like the one above) often use the names of celebrities to trick Facebook users into thinking they’re legitimate.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of fake giveaways operating on Facebook at any one time, and this broad category of scam has a number of different variations. For example, fake Facebook pages posing as legitimate brands asking users to “like, share and comment” on a post before trying to lure them to a spammy marketing website that steals their personal information.
For 2022 we’ve noticed with increasing frequency that these scammers are branching out. Instead of just relying on users stumbling upon their fake Facebook pages and “giveaway” posts, they’re now actively targeting fans of legitimate Facebook pages to find potential victims.
For example we’ve seen these scammers flock to Facebook posts made by legitimate pages (for example legitimate competitions or videos by social media personalities) and reply to the comments made on these posts in order to lure Facebook users to their own scam Facebook pages and websites.
The above image shows a comment by a user on a popular Facebook post and the scammers replying to that comment by asking them to click on their profile name.
We’ve already discussed how many different scammers are flocking to viral social media posts in our article here.
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Romance scammers are prolific on Facebook, helped in part by Facebook’s refusal to remove their profiles and comments. Romance scams have been one of the online crimes to flourish since the pandemic began, and social media has often proved be an effective watering hole for these crooks.
Again we’re seeing an uptick in scammers replying to comments on popular Facebook posts in order to try and find potential victims (below.)
These scammers attempt to befriend Facebook users, lure them to sending a friend request, and then develop a relationship with them. And finally the scammer will attempt to manipulate the victim into sending money over the Internet or by mail.
And sadly again we’ve seen Facebook refuse to remove these comments and profiles because they “don’t violate their terms of service”. As such, romance scammers will once again be a frequent fixture on Facebook for 2022.
We’re still seeing an uptick in scams that start when the victim gets a link sent to them by a Facebook friend. Only of course it isn’t the Facebook friend that actually sent the message. It’s a crook who has gained access to their account and is now posing as that friend.
The link the “friend” sends will try and entice the victim into clicking it by accompanying the link with a message such as “look who died” or “is this you?”.
The link leads to a fake Facebook login page asking for the victim’s username and password. And that information is sent to a scammer if the victim enters it!