Social media is incredibly popular and, as I have warned you many times, anything popular with the public will always be popular with scammers and so it was not surprising when a recent report of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) indicated that in 2021 scammers profited from scams that initially started on social media more than any other method of contacting their victims.  So while we should all be wary of emails and text messages that are used by scammers to contact us, we are most vulnerable on social media.

According to the FTC, scam victims lost approximately 770 million dollars to scams that originated on social media in 2021 and this figure is undoubtedly less than the real amount because studies have shown that most people who have been scammed don’t even report the scam to law enforcement or government agencies.  Demographically, according to the FTC study people between the ages of 18 and 39 were the most likely to be scammed on social media.

But scammers also use social media to gather personal information about us that they can use for scams or identity theft and too often we make it easy for the scammers and identity thieves by posting too much personal information about us on social media.  Identity thieves will post what appear to be innocuous posts asking what was your first car or your pet’s name when their real intention is to gather information that may be used to answer security questions that protect your sensitive accounts such as your bank accounts.

TIPS

So how do you protect yourself?

Use the privacy settings on your social media accounts to limit the personal information collected by your social media platform.  Some platforms  also allow you to opt out of targeted advertising.

Carefully consider before posting a comment or a response to a social media post that asks for information about you as to how this information can be used and accumulated by a scammer not only to answer a security question, but also to put together a profile of you and your interests that could be used by a clever scammer to formulate a specifically targeted spear phishing email or text message to you that would be used to lure you into clicking on infected links or providing personal information.

Also, one last tip in regard to the security questions that you set up with various accounts such as your bank account.  The answers to many of the commonly asked questions can be obtained through an online search, such as your mother’s maiden name, however there is no rule that says that you must provide a true answer to your security question.  If you use the answer “Grapefruit” as the answer to your bank’s security question about your mother’s maiden name, no scammer will ever be able to figure it out and you will remember it because it is so silly.

For those of you receiving the Scam of the day through an email, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the ever increasing list of Coronavirus scams go to the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website and click on the tab at the top of the page that indicates “Coronavirus Scams.”  Scamicide has been cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.

If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive free daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address where it states “Sign up for this blog.”