Some Interesting Scams
Facebook – we know it’s big and we know there’s money involved… but what are the common scams that happen on Facebook, apart from the potential obvious of someone stealing your password.
Facebook Scams are more common than we think:
- Scam 1 – Like Farming
This image has been seen all over Facebook accompanied with the instructions to like and type in a specific word like ‘Move’.The concept is that every time you comment, like or share these image will be seen by all your friends who in turn comment like or share and then it will be seen by al their friends and so on… In a very short space of time this image will be seen by millions.
The scam part is that the original poster of the image will raise huge credibility within the Facebook system, This will encourage more of his posts been shared more often and overall he will benefit from ore Page Likes, so compounding the problem. Then all he has to do is post a link to buy something or send people to a dodgy websites and the scam begins.
The solution is of course never to respond to any posts that require you to take some sort of action. Read more here.
- Scam 2 – Twitter Hi-Jacking
It’s a strange one because often you won’t have given away your password – but you might well have signed up for appears to be a legitimate service that has given access to your Twitter account… Usually in the form of allowing them to write on your time line.The concept is that once someone has access to your Timeline they can spread their message to all your followers, the numbers make the mind boggle, but message like ‘Find Out who wrote this bad blog on you’ can zip around Twitter in hours and of course you want to stop it, so your respond.
The solution is more simple, change your password and review any Apps that have access to your account, click here for more.
- Scam 3 – Competitor Harming
It agreed that buying Likes is a really bad idea, thousands of foreign based accounts with zero engagement value actually harms your Facebook efforts, if you do not engage Facebook mark you down, so you’re far better off having fewer, but more valuable Fans and Followers.So why not buy fans for your competition. Duff in your competitors efforts and usually actually excite them as they think they’re gaining thousands of extra Followers. Usually this form of Scam can be totally untraceable.
The solution is extremely difficult, if this happens to you need to contact Facebook or Twitter directly or you could spend days deleting people. I don’t have a link to this scam, I just saw it being done to a Fan Page I know.
Ultimately all scams can be protected from by a combination of awareness and common sense… My number one tip for preventing Viruses on your computer is to shut down each night – being off line for 50% of a day will immediately reduce your risk 50%. The same applies – sign out, watch out and don’t respond to anything that looks in the least bit dodgy.