Social media causes a lot of people to fall victim to scams they may have never would have believed before, but what happens when we click on them?
One of the most viral scams you have seen is coupons that promise you an INSANE deal, like $45 off at Costco or a free couch at IKEA. They seem harmless enough; what could happen when I share this? By allowing a third party access to your Facebook login, you are making it extremely easy for someone to get all your information including friends list, hometown, and more. According to My Security Awareness, this is a major way how scammers get a hold of your email and phone number, in order to contact you for more scams and to send you phishing links.
You know those huge chain emails people used to send back in the early 2000s? Your friends sending that to you could also be a risk for your email being stolen. Those forward chains usually have a list of everyone who had been forwarded the email, which allows for scammers to sift the information to use or sell to other shady agencies. BullGuard has some great resources on how they can scam you in various ways with this method, and how to pick out a fake email.
Facebook is also a big source of fake contesting pages, you've seen them before as they always claim something like "everyone who shares this will get a free trip to Disneyland as long as you like the page as well!" These contests in some form usually need you to take a survey in order to win. The catch? There is no prize and the only person who won is the scammer that got your info. Why do they want us to share and like the page though if that doesn't give them the access they want? The more people who share the post and then like the page make it look legitimate, and Facebook will have a harder time sniffing it out. Anytime you see a big company like Toyota or Disneyland giving away a big prize, if they page isn't verified, or doesn't have a significant amount of likes, it's not real. Disneyland has millions of likes on Facebook, not 10,000.
Social media scams are all over the place, and the best bet is that if it seems too good to be true, don't share it. In some cases a hacker will be able to get into your account and message your friends, in order to scam them too. The Balance created a list of more than 10 types of Facebook scams and how to identify them. Including ways that a scammer could get into your friends profile, and convince you to send them money!
Anytime someone offers you an amount of cash without any real type of work in return, it's best to assume that it's a scam. The person saying they can flip your $100 into $1000 in the span of an hour is lying, and you won't see that money ever again.
Scammers are getting better and better about tricking people out of their money and information. With Coronavirus more of these scams are rising, so make sure to protect yourself and loved ones.