Identity theft is a growing concern around the world. For companies considering an investment of resources in growing their social media presence, Elite Personal Finance has published a powerful article that highlights some of the ways your customers can avoid getting ripped off while interacting in the digital world. Avoid creating advertisements or promotions that share similar themes to the frauds mentioned below.
Share this Post and Raise Money for XX Charity
Companies donate tens of millions of dollars every year to worthy charities around the globe. While this is a noble cause and worthy of a Facebook post or tweet, unscrupulous companies are taking advantage of this to market their products. A scam post will say something along the lines of “Share our post and XX company will donate $10 to XX charity!”.
In reality the post contains a link to a fraudulent site that likely harvests customer data. Well-intentioned social media users pass on this link to their friends and family in an effort to raise money for a cause they care about.
Random Facebook Quizzes Requiring Phone Numbers
Facebook users in recent months have been plagued by friends taking online quizzes and sharing the results of the quiz on their timeline. While many of these quizzes are completely harmless, some require users to enter their phone number in order to see their results. After the results of the quiz are texted to the user, an unexpected charge is added to the customer’s bill by the fraudulent company that facilitated the quiz.
Fun and light-hearted social media quizzes are being used to gain customer phone numbers. Cleverly written terms and conditions for these quizzes dubiously enable the quiz company to charge the mobile number for their service. These charges show up on the user’s cell phone bill without their informed consent.
Fake Facebook Accounts
Another crazy Facebook scam is the creation of a profile that completely copies someone else’s profile. This might be a friend or family member that you trust. The scammer downloads the profile photo and uploads it as their own, along with copying all the personal details publicly available via Facebook. Then the scammer sends your friends a facebook request. Many, thinking it’s from you, will immediately add the “friend”.
Using the legitimacy that your friends give this Facebook profile, more friend requests are sent out. Then, once the scammer feels that they’ve friended as many people as possible, they begin sending private messages out to their contacts, and posting spammy links on their newsfeed.
Your friends, thinking this message is from you, proceed to click on the link and potentially enter their private information. Some links even download viruses onto the computers of innocent users.
Keep an eye out for Facebook accounts that appear to be copies of yours, and act quickly to report fraudulent accounts when friends bring them to your attention.
Shortened URL’s
While shortening URL’s for your downloads and product links with services like Bitly or Google URL Shortener might seem like a great idea, bear in mind that these services are used to transmit viruses and spam online via social media. Many fraudulent sites, in combination with many of the methods mentioned above, create content that includes these shortened links in contexts that lead viewers to believe they are clicking on something totally different from the actual link destination.
Furthermore, regular usage of these shortened URL’s leads customers to expect these types of URL’s in future communications from your brand. This opens the door for scammers to make a play on the trust that your customers have in these shortened, nondescript links from your brand.