Social media activity and browsing has become a part people’s everyday routines. As of August 2015, Facebook had 1.49 billion active users, Twitter had 316 million and Instagram had 300 million—those are only a few of the social media channels that are being actively used. Unfortunately, social media has also become a playground for fraudsters and scammers, as a result of these platforms being unregulated, highly visible and easily exploitable.
We’ve broken down a few of the most common social media scams that are currently making the rounds throughout the popular platforms.
“See who’s viewed your profile”
These scams are a form of “clickjacking”—luring users into clicking on a link by promising a desirable incentive. Instead, these links send users to an online survey that earns a scammer commission. These surveys may collect personal information from the user lured into the trap, which scammers will turn around and sell for reward. It is important for users to keep in mind that Facebook and many other platforms do not currently track which users have viewed a personal profile, and they would not share that information publicly if they did.
Facebook “disklike” button
This scam has been floating around for a while—Facebook users have been demanding a “dislike” button, in addition to the “like” button, from the social media king for some time. Scammers created posts that urge Facebook users to download and enable a “dislike” button to their account that would allow them to give the thumbs-down to other posts. In reality, if a user clicked the scam they were either taken to a survey scam or malware was installed to the device. Facebook never did create a “dislike button, but they recently announced that it will be testing six emoji reaction buttons instead, which will likely add to the scam confusion.
Fake celebrity news
Maybe you’ve seen the heading somewhere in your newsfeed, “You won’t believe what this person did!” or “What they did next will shock you!” As enticing as these captions and their photos may be, a large amount of the shocking articles and celebrity news stories will lead a curious social media user to a malware download or phishing attempt.
“Your account has been cancelled” or “confirm your e-mail”
This phishing attempt comes in the form of an e-mail or message from the social media platform provider. These messages tell the user that their account has been cancelled or their account setup information must be confirmed. Users are lured into providing personal details such as passwords, usernames and e-mail account information in order to “repair” their broken account. If a user ever needs to verify account information, they should go directly to the site platform, and avoid links that have been included in a message.
The fake friend request or follower
While social networks attempt to filter out fake accounts or bots, they cannot catch all of them. As a result, not all friend requests or followers on your social media sites are going to be real people. Some social media user accounts are created just to establish broad connections to steal personal information from users or spam them. Anytime a user receives an invitation to connect or follow from an individual they do not know, they should be cautious to accept. In addition, accounts with no profile picture, located in a different country, or with little to no connections should also be red flags.
Social media scams will continue to be problem as more users are becoming active across platforms. While it’s hard to catch every scam, there are steps account users can take to help protect themselves:
- Only click links from reliable sources
- Change social media account passwords occasionally
- Adjust privacy and security settings – and think twice before posting personal information
- Don’t always trust that a message is from who it says it is from – if a message seems suspicious, use an alternate method to contact your friend to confirm
- Type the address of your social networking site directly into your browser or use personal bookmarks
- Be selective on who you add as friends or connections