How to Protect Yourself from Being a Victim of a Scam on Social Media
Now that social media has become one of the most popular ways for interpersonal communication online, scam artists have taken advantage of this new media to retrieve personal information from the users of these sites. We have some tips to help you avoid being scammed.
Phishing: The activity of defrauding an online account holder of financial information by posing as a legitimate company.
Scammers are acquiring consumers’ usernames, passwords, credit card numbers and other personal information for phishing.
To prevent you from being a victim of these scams, here are some tips from the Better Business Bureau.
- Read the entire message. If you receive a message asking for your account information, fully read the message that was sent to you. Most people don’t read entire messages that were sent to them, so scammers use this to their advantage.
- Look at the message’s content. When looking at the message you received, be sure to check for a few key things. Check for spelling or grammatical errors. If there are errors, the message was probably written by someone who doesn’t speak the same language as you. Also, check to see if the message urges you to “respond quickly” or “click a link right away.” If this is written, it is probably a scam.
- Check the message sender. Check whether this message comes from a friend, a stranger or from someone saying to be from the website security team. Remember that Facebook security members rarely make contact with users unless the user makes initial contact first.
- Use a safe browser. Activate your browser’s “Safe Browsing” feature. When this feature is used, it will catch most phishing scams for you.
- Never give out personal information. No matter what the message says, never give out any usernames or passwords, no matter how promising the message or link seems.
For more tips and information about Facebook phishing scams, visit
www.bbb.org or call 1-800-388-2222.
