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Bill Cunningham has been a Scam Champion for Trading Standards for eight years and has spent a lot of time throughout Surrey delivering presentations about scams for community groups and companies.
Following Bill’s previous article on how to avoid becoming a scam victim, he has kindly written a follow up article on scams and social media.
Is social media good? Is social media bad? Could it be called anti-social media? Social media is an ideal way for friends and communities to interact positively but it is also used by scammers who exploit it to fleece us. They do this in a number of ways including using Facebook and other services with messages from fake profiles and classified ads in Marketplace. Some of these scams are quite sophisticated and we must remain vigilant.
There’s a heap of care we should take when buying, especially online. But it all boils down to us knowing who we are buying from. If we do not then for sure it’s buyer beware. It is risky to read a message on social media, especially from someone we do not know, and follow their advice about purchasing a product or service and we should simply go direct to the seller via their own website
QR codes, the black square blobs that are increasingly appearing in public places like on restaurant tables, car parking stations and elsewhere are amongst the new methods that scammers are exploiting. Before we use this method of ordering/ paying for a service we should look for any evidence of tampering, like stickers placed over the original. And we should for certain avoid QR codes embedded in emails.
Data from Action Fraud indicates that over 22,500 people last year reported that their online accounts had been hacked, resulting in well over £1m lost. It’s no wonder that their advice is that we must take steps to prevent reoccurrence. Our passwords for all sites must be different and we should use 3 word passwords (e.g. bluetablebananas) as these are very unlikely to be hacked. The longer the password the better too, for 20 characters are better than 12, and adding in a mix of numbers and other characters to the 3 words creates additional security. Over 4,000 victims reported being extorted for money, or having their accounts used to perpetrate fraud against others. One example related to hacked social media accounts being utilised to promote fake Taylor Swift tickets. We are of course less likely to suspect it’s a scam if the tickets appear to be sold by someone who has lots of friends on their profile and posts dating back years.
Scammers often pretend to be advertisers on social media by creating social media accounts, and pay to have their scam message advertised to us. They thus exploit the credibility of social media advertising, for we’re used to seeing and trusting offers from genuine advertisers there.
We see an ad, say on Instagram, Facebook or TikTok, are attracted to the product on offer, add it to the online cart and click pay now. There’s a PayPal payment option and we trust that. Then we get a tracking number and an email to confirm when the purchase will arrive at our home. So far it looks the part and even more so when we get tracking links even if it is from a different domain named (alas scam) company. Scammers gain time by showing us the dud package travel route points and thus, we’d not generally panic at this point.
It’s when the communications stop that we then realise that the worst may happen and that our money has gone for goods that will not materialise.
The Online Safety Bill is now signed off into into law, which means that social media giants such as Facebook, Google and Instagram must take responsibility for removing harmful content, including scams and fraud, from their platforms. If they don’t comply, they could see fines up to £18m or 10% of their global annual turnover, whichever is the higher amount.
The National Cyber Security Centre also offer advice on how to spot a scam email, text message or call. You are also able to report these scams to them. There is also government advice available here.
We also released an article this year on Cyber Security and the most common types of charity cyber attack, which you can read here.
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