According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) more scams are started on social media than on any other platform at a cost for the last two years of 2.7 billion dollars and that figure is probably low because many victims, often out of embarrassment, do not report being victimized.  Social media based scams take many forms, but are often based on our trusting the people we encounter as friends on social media.  Remember my motto, “trust me, you can’t trust anyone.”  Scammers harvest information about you that you post on social media to learn about your identity and interests and use that information to target you with a wide variety of scams including investment scams, romance scams and sales of phony products.

TIPS

Don’t accept friend requests from everyone who asks to be your friend on social media and don’t trust communications on social media merely because they appear to come from your friends.  Often social media accounts are hacked or cloned and the scammers, posing as your friends,  leverage the trust that you have in your friends to lure you into phony investments, phony sales and romances.  Further, even if a communication comes from a real friend, often people will forward scams that they have been fooled into thinking are legitimate.

Use your privacy settings to limit who can see the information you post on social media.

Remember it is good rule to never click on links that may appear on social media, text messages or emails unless you have absolutely confirmed that they are legitimate because the risk of downloading malware is too great.

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