Clever scam artists are increasingly setting up phony websites that appear to be for customer service or tech support of many of the companies with which we do business. Often they either purchase an ad to appear at the top of a search engine search or they manipulate the algorithms used by Google and other search engines to make their phony customer service number appear high on a search. They also purchase telephone numbers that are a single digit off of the legitimate phone numbers for many companies’ tech support or customer support in order to take advantage of common consumer misdials. Compounding the problem is the fact that many companies, particularly social media companies, do not provide a customer service telephone number to call and speak to a real person about your problem. They only provide online support.
In 2020 I told you about Dr. Melanye Maclin of Maryland who needed help with her Facebook account and obtained what she thought was the phone number for tech support for Facebook which she got from a posting on Facebook’s Help Community Chat board. Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t have a tech support phone number. The phony tech support number on the chat board was posted by a scammer. When Dr. Maclin called the phony number, she was instructed by the scammer to enable remote access to her phone which Dr. Maclin did. Unfortunately, this led to the scammers gaining access to her CashApp account through which the scammers stole $6,332.
TIPS
The best place to look for a telephone number for customer support or tech support is right on your bill or the legitimate website of the company. Even when you do call legitimate tech support or customer service telephone numbers take extra care to make sure that you are dialing correctly and not calling a clever scammer who may have purchased a telephone number that is a digit off of the correct phone number in an attempt to ensnare people who may misdial the number.
Among the social media services that do not provide tech support by phone are Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. Here are links to tech support for those social media services:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/
Instagram: https://help.instagram.com/
Snapchat: https://support.snapchat.com/en-US
Twitter: https://support.twitter.com/
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