5 very popular Facebook scams and how to spot them
Scammers often target the most widely used social network on the Internet, Facebook. And that’s not likely to change in 2019. On a site where sharing with others is encouraged, it is hardly surprising that scams are among the many things that proliferate throughout the site.
Here we outline the most popular Facebook scams and how to spot them.
Facebook Phishing
Imagine getting an unexpected instant message or email from Facebook (or Facebook Security) claiming you MUST login to your account by clicking the link provided or risk losing your account. Perhaps the message said your account was suspended, or in violation of Facebook’s terms of service. To restore order, you need to click the link, login and get everything sorted.
This is a classic phishing scam. The crooks are pretending to be from Facebook. But they aren’t. The crooks have spoofed the sender’s name to make it appear to be from Facebook. And the link they ask you to click on leads to a spoof website that isn’t Facebook. But it will steal your username and password when you try and login, handing over control of your account (if you don’t have login approvals enabled) to the crooks. From there, the crooks can do all sorts of bad things, like gather your personal information, or try and scam your friends with the “fake friend” scam, which we go into further below.
For example, the below image shows a message that was sent to our page by someone pretending to be from Facebook Security, asking us to click a link.
The advice against phishing scams is always the same. Never click on links in emails or messages that you weren’t expecting. And if you do, check the web address at the top of your browser to see what website you’ve really ended up on. Messages from Facebook urging you to click a link are nearly always going to be scams!
Facebook Cloning
It’s unlikely that Facebook Cloning is never really going to go away, because it’s just so simple. Crooks go to a person’s account, copy the name and profile picture, as well as any other public information they can find. Then they just create a brand new account using that information, and voila, a cloned account.
To many Facebook users who don’t properly check the cloned account, it looks like the real deal. The crooks will send friend requests to the friends of that account to trick them into accepting. Once that friend request has been accepted, the crook will try and carry out any number of scams, including the “fake friend” scam (again which we discuss below.)
To stop crooks cloning your account, hide your friends list from public view by heading to your friends list and clicking the edit button. The crooks won’t know who to send their friend requests to if they don’t who you’re friends with. And if you’re the person getting the friend request, always be extremely suspicious of friend requests from people you’re already friends with on Facebook.
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“Fake Friend” Scams
“Fake Friend” scams on Facebook can allude to any scam where a crook is pretending to be one of your friends to try and scam you. It’s possible the crook has compromised the account of one of your friends (for example, with a phishing scam which we discussed earlier) or they’ve cloned a friend’s account and tricked you into accepting a friend request (like with the cloning scam which we discussed earlier, too.)
The aim of the “fake friend” scam is to trick someone into handing over sensitive information, money or luring them to dangerous websites, by posing as a Facebook friend. For example, one popular “fake friend” scam is the “friend in crisis” scam where the crook pretends to be the victim’s friend or family member over Facebook and claims to be in trouble while on holiday and in urgent need of money. The victim is tricked into wiring money to the crook, believing they are helping out their friend or family member.
Alternatively the crook could pretend to be a friend on Facebook to lure victims to get-rich-quick scams, websites laced with malware, data harvesting websites or websites associated with identity fraud.
Be wary of suspicious messages from friends on Facebook. Just because a message appears to have come from a friend, it doesn’t mean that it has. If in doubt, check with your friends outside of Facebook to verify it’s actually them sending you messages.
Fake Facebook competitions
Perhaps one of the most common Facebook scams is the fake competition posts that almost every user has seen at one point in time. These are the posts that claim you can win a free car, holiday, cruise, tickets to Disneyland, RV or a gift coupon to any number of recognisable stores, just for sharing and commenting on a post on Facebook.
But what they’ll also probably ask you to do is click a link to “verify your entry”. And it’s that link that leads to the scam, which is usually a data harvesting website that is intent on capturing your contact information in order to spam you. Or worse, scam you.
Competitions by well-known brands are run from their official, blue ticked Facebook pages, not imposter pages or anonymous Facebook pages. If you’re not sure a competition is real, contact the brand directly and ask. But in the meantime, understand that you’re not going to win a holiday for four just by sharing a Facebook post.
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Fake Sponsored Ad Get-Rich-Quick Scams
Despite Facebook’s pledge to remove these scams from their platform, the social network has so far failed. Not only do they still exist on Facebook, but they often frequent Facebook’s Sponsored Ads feature where advertisers pay Facebook to get their ads to appear in user’s newsfeeds.
One of the most common fake Sponsored Ad scams is the get-rich-quick investment scam, where users click the Sponsored Ad and are directed to fake “media” reports about the latest investment opportunity that claims people are getting rich by signing up to some “automated money making system”. Such sites often (and falsely) claim these systems have been created by – or sponsored by – various celebrities.
Such as scam post on Facebook can be seen below –
These are just scams looking to dupe visitors into handing over money to join. Money which they’ll ultimately lose. Websites claiming to offer get-rich-quick schemes that appear too good to be true are always going to be exactly that. And just because they say they are celebrity endorsed, it doesn’t mean that’s true either. (We discuss legitimate ways you can make money on the Internet in our blog post here.)
That’s our top five scams. There are many more, of course, but keeping an eye out for these popular ones will help keep you safe on the Internet’s largest social network. And remember, if you see something suspicious, err on the side of caution and always seek help if you’re not sure.
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