Social Media Scams Part 1
by Anne R. Allen
Everybody tells writers we must be on social media, but almost nobody mentions all the dangers we’re going to run into. There’s big money in social media these days. And wherever there’s money, you’ll find crooks, trolls, fraudsters, and scammers. Social media scams are big business in some developing countries, where whole villages may be employed by click farms, con artists, and identity thieves.
Since Facebook is the most popular social network right now, it seems to have attracted the largest number of crooks and trolls, but you’ll find them everywhere.
Some of the schemes are as silly as the Nigerian prince scam, and most people won’t fall for them, but they can be annoying and spammy.
Others are dangerous and can get your computer infected with malware and lead to identity theft, so be careful who you friend, follow, share, and encircle.
As I wrote this, I kept running into more social media scams, so I’ve divided this into two posts. I’ll post the second part on June 19th. (Next week we’ll have a must-read post on anthologies from blogging ninja, Alex J. Cavanaugh of the Insecure Writers Support Group.)
1) Spoofed Facebook Friend Pages
This scam is the subject of an article in the New York Times today.
The fraud goes like this: Someone you actually know will ask to “friend” you on Facebook. You’ll say “what? How can I not be Facebook friends with Sally? I’ve known her for years! I’d better fix that!”
So you click the “confirm” button to accept the friend request.
But that’s not Sally’s page. It’s a copy. You’ve now invited a scammer into your circle of friends.
Some of these people are simply searching for fake Facebook “friends” to sell to marketers, but others are looking to scam you. It’s not Sally’s problem as much as yours, so be wary.
This is a very old scam, but it’s still going strong.
A popular scam using spoofed pages is a variation on the “Help, I’ve been robbed in a foreign country and need money to get home!” email con. Once you’ve accepted the friendship of the spoofer, they’ll start sending you DMs begging for money to bail them out of some dire circumstance. If you haven’t seen Sally in a while, you might actually believe she’s had her pocket picked in Naples and figure you’d better wire her money.
Don’t.
Criminals also use spoofed profiles to post bogus “surveys” and “contests” that are designed to steal your personal information. They figure if you think your real-life friend has posted it, you’ll be more likely to click on their links.
Telltale signs of a spoofed page: it is blank except for the header and your friend’s headshot, and it and usually says, “Sally only shares her posts with friends.”
What to do:
In the toolbar in the header (the one inside the photo, not the bar at the tippy top of the page), there’s a little thingy with three dots. Click on the three dots and you’ll get a drop-down menu that includes “report”. Click on “report.” Then you’ll get an option to choose “this person is pretending to be me” or “this person is pretending to be my friend.” You’ll have an option to report the profile for review and send a message to your friend alerting them of the bogus page. Make sure you do both.
Facebook usually takes the page down within minutes of getting the report. I personally have found them very responsive. But David Segal, writing as “the Haggler” in the New York Times today reported that a friend has tried to get a fake profile of his war hero son taken down eight times, but Facebook refuses. If this happens to you, make sure to alert your friends that the spoofed page exists and warn them not to interact with it.
2) Social Media Friend Requests from Fake Profiles
Every morning when I go to Facebook, I find a friend request from a middle-aged white man in a uniform or business suit. Every ten days or so there isn’t one and I almost miss them. 🙂 But I’m happy to report that handsome Anthony Rico (or Rico Anthony)–an oil worker–tried to befriend me just before this post went live today.
Even more of these guys put me in their “circles” on Google Plus. I’ve had a bunch from LinkedIn, too.
The typical fake profile:
This “person” will usually have two first names, or the names will be strangely reversed. He’ll be named something like Bob John or McGregor Fred, suggesting the perpetrator doesn’t have a lot of familiarity with the names of English-speaking males.
There may be two photos on the page. The man may be pictured in front of an American flag, body of water, or late model car. The header may sport a picture of an oil rig, ship, car, or sometimes a battlefield. Often they’re just blank.
The only “status update” on the page will be another copy of the photo. On Google Plus that one photo may be repeated many times.
He may claim to be a high-ranking US military officer, the CEO of a company, or a lonely guy making lots of money on a ship or oil rig. He will usually claim to have gone to university in one country, work in another and live in a third.
These can simply be fake profiles the perpetrator hopes to sell to the morons who buy “friends” and followers to impress advertisers or look important, but other times they’re targeting your wallet.
If you accept the friendship or add them to a circle or network, the scammer may start sending you Direct Messages trying to extort money in one way or another–either with tales of dire misfortune in a war zone or declarations of affection.
What to do:
I don’t accept friend requests from anybody unless we have mutual friends or they look like readers. If there’s no mention of books or reading on the page, you probably don’t have to worry that you’ll lose a fan by ignoring somebody. And don’t feel sorry for these people for being friendless. Profiles with no friends or followers are almost always fake. Those photos are lifted from military and corporate websites.
3) Social Media Romeos (aka “Catfish”)
If you’re female and befriend the “officer”, “CEO” or lonely guy above, he may immediately tell you that he is smitten by your beauty and declare his undying love.
This is such a common social media scam that there’s a website for outing the fraudsters (sometimes called “catfish“) called Romance Scam http://romancescam.com/ (WordPress strikes through that link, but it’s perfectly good.) They also have a Facebook page. They describe themselves as “dedicated to fighting Nigerian and Russian romance scammers.”
The fake romance stuff seems to be big business. But some of the Romeo-wannabes don’t even bother to friend or follow you. They just send a Direct Message.
Catfishing on Facebook
On Facebook, those messages mostly end up in the folder that used to be called “other” and is now called “filtered.” You can’t find them unless you go to Messages, then click on “More” for the drop down menu—and click on “filtered.”
You do want to check your filtered messages on a regular basis, because sometimes they can be from readers or other actual humans who want to contact you.
But mostly they’re only good for a laugh—scammers with dodgy English skills saying how beautiful you are and how they “hope to know you better.” I assume men get similar ones from female profiles who are equally smitten.
I got one last week from a guy Facebook identified as Abdul Mohammed who said “I am General William. Very important US Army Service. You have beautiful face and sweet. I hope to know you better.”
Gee thanks, General. And you have identity crisis. Call medic.
Not that you should engage with these people in any way. If you acknowledge them, they will start sending hilariously inappropriate “love letters.”
This is to butter you up for a pitch for funds later on. These will usually be variations on the Nigerian prince scam or a hard-luck story.
These guys do not limit their prowling to Facebook. I get them on Google Plus and LinkedIn too.
Married women who respond with an “I’m married” message usually get a barrage of steamy notes in reply, so never respond to these guys.
I assume that men get similar “admirer” notes. Guys out there—do share any gems in the comments.
What to do:
Delete, report, and block.
4) Extortion via Direct Messages
I’m pretty good at weeding out the fake male profiles on social media, but every so often a female fraudster gets through.
Back in 2014, I got a Facebook DM from an African woman—or a person posing as a woman—who had friended me. She claimed that my “kinsman” General John Allen was being held hostage in her remote African village and he would be tortured until I paid a ransom (surprisingly small for the four-star general in charge of all the U.S. forces in the Middle East 🙂 ).
I made the mistake of responding because I’d just seen a photo of General Allen talking with President Obama in Washington that morning, so I sent a link showing that he was alive and well (and added he is no relation to me.)
Unfortunately, these people are like trolls—any response is taken as encouragement. So this woman sent about ten more messages with details of the torture of poor General Allen. I blocked her and reported her, but it was a creepy experience.
What to do:
Immediately block and report for abuse any requests for money from somebody who has just friended you.
5) Abused Animal Photos
Those horrible photos of abused animals that show up in your feed aren’t just disgusting. They are often criminal.
They pretend to be trying to fight animal abuse, and order you to “share if you care about animals.”
But they’re the opposite. They can try to lure you to a paid animal abuse video site. (Yes, these sicko sites exist. I used them as a plot device in my novel So Much for Buckingham.)
Or, worse, they’re going to install malware if you click on their links.
What to do:
Never click on a photo or video that shows morbid images of animals or humans being abused. Block them from your feed and report abuse.
6) Share this on Social Media and a Zillionaire Will Give Big Bux to Charity.
This silly thing is as old as the Internet, but you still see it making the rounds.
In your newsfeed, you’ll see a picture of a pitiable sick person or sad puppy with a message to “Like this page! If we get 100,000 likes, Bill Gates/ Mark Zuckerberg/ Warren Buffett will give a million dollars to pitiable sick persons and/or sad puppies.”
I fell for this when it was a chain-letter email the first day I went on the Internet back in the 90s. Apparently it’s still going strong as a social media scam.
What to do:
Break the chain. Zillionaires don’t need your help in deciding what charities to donate to.
7) The “I Have Too Many Friends” Social Media Post
This little passive-aggressive number stomps through my friends’ Facebook pages about once a year or so. It’s amazing how easily people are manipulated.
Otherwise sane people will share an awful post that says something like “I know most of you are just useless, selfish, fair-weather friends who don’t care about poor little me and my miseries, so I’m weeding out the dead wood. If you don’t comment on this post and share it, I will unfriend you and banish you from my life forever.”
Remember that if you’re a writer or service provider, you’re on social media to be friendly to potential customers and fans. You want more friends, not fewer.
If somebody hasn’t been commenting on your posts recently, Facebook’s algorithms may simply have eliminated you from their feed. Probably because you aren’t commenting on their pages enough.
So you are pointlessly deleting friends—which will very likely hurt their feelings and lose sales for you. It will also make you look like a needy, passive-aggressive brat with Borderline Personality Disorder.
No doubt this was started by an actual needy, passive-aggressive brat with Borderline Personality Disorder, and it’s been manipulating gullible people into sharing it for years.
What to do:
Stop the madness! Block the message from your feed. Do not comment or share.
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen), June 5, 2016
I know I’ve just scratched the surface with these. I’ll have 7 more for next time. There are tons of crazy, manipulative, and criminal posts going around social media. Have any of these happened to you? Do you have any to add? Have you run into an iffy post or profile and wondered if it was a scam?
This week Ruth has a blogpost about her new cozy set in…NYC! Cozies aren’t just for rural Maine anymore. Anne continues her series on poisons with a post on cyanide on her book blog.
BOOK OF THE WEEK
The Camilla Randall Mysteries Box set is on sale at all the Amazons.
You can also find it at
Kobo, iTunes,Smashwords, Inktera, NOOK, 24Symbols, and Scribd.
Snarky, delicious fun! The Camilla Randall mysteries are a laugh-out-loud mashup of romantic comedy, crime fiction, and satire: Dorothy Parker meets Dorothy L. Sayers. Perennially down-and-out socialite Camilla Randall is a magnet for murder, mayhem and Mr. Wrong, but she always solves the mystery in her quirky, but oh-so-polite way. Usually with more than a little help from her gay best friend, Plantagenet Smith.
***
KUDOS!! Regular commenter Sasha Palmer, “The Happy Amateur” was the first prize winner–out of more than 500 entries–in the poetry contest, the Theater Cloud’s Loneliness Project. Her poem won the title of “the most powerful piece.” So you deserve major congrats, Sasha!
Another scam like the injured animals is the cancer posts–usually a picture of a bald woman who beat cancer and how many likes she can get. In a lot of cases, the person who is in the photo has no idea this is going around. A lot of those are trying to generate clicks so they can benefit from the traffic. I’ve seen them for people over 100 also.
Earlier this year, I did a Desert Storm post, and I ended up with a Tweet from a person who mainly posted in Arabic. The Tweet was one line, but vaguely threatening, along the lines of “You will regret what you did.” (He evidently reacted to the title, not to the content!). I blocked it immediately and it was reported to the FBI.
Linda–I talk about this type of scam in part two. That one is especially nasty when it’s a sick child and the child has long since passed away. The person over 100 is a new twist. Thanks for that. I’ll add it to the post.
The threatening tweet you got about Desert Storm is chilling. We know the terrorists are on social media, so it makes sense that they’re out there attacking our military online. I’m glad you could report him to the FBI. I’m sure those are the people that law enforcement likes to be able to keep an eye on.
I’m always amazed at the number of people who reply to a tweeted link without reading the article. They’re usually trollish and unpleasant and based on a misunderstanding of the title. I usually block people who do that.
I’m really glad I’m not on Facebook.
Some of those have been around in one form or another for a long time. The animal abuse one is new though.
I do get a lot of foreigners adding me to their Google+ circles. Most I don’t add back.
If I ever have a question about a link, I pull it up on my iPad instead and avoid the risk of a virus.
Looking forward to next week! Hope that Ninja guy is good…
Alex–Looking forward to your post!
Yeah, I don’t know what to do about those Google Plus people. If they have some posts in English and they seem to be interested in books, I follow back. But mostly they’re just a mystery, so I ignore them.
The animal ones are sickening. I’m not on Instagram, so I don’t know if they are there, too, but I guess anywhere there are images these people could go trolling.
Wow – apparently there are a whole lot more people out in the world writing fiction than I thought! What a shame these folks aren’t putting all that creative energy into something positive.
CS–You’re so right. These scammers are people in developing countries who obviously have tech skills. If they went into a legitimate business, I’m sure they’d make much more money than with these stupid scams.
I’m sure there are lots more people out there who could use tech help or virtual assistants or cheap cover designs or book banners than are looking for romance with creepy guys who don’t know their own name.
Anne—Thanks for such a helpful post. I’ve heard of some of these scams but not others. Thanks for the heads up!
Ruth–I see this stuff so often, I figured I should give people a heads-up. If you know these fraudsters are out there, it’s pretty easy to spot them, but so many authors are newbies to social media and welcome everybody with open arms. Not a good idea.
Yep, seen them all. Ignored them all. And, not because I thought they were spam, necessarily, but because I found them disgusting or blatantly untrustworthy. These things make it hard to be self protective and social at the same time, though. I tend toward self protective every time. Might not further my career but it keeps me sane.
Christine–It is a fine line between being friendly and being an easy target. We need to be savvy and know what red flags to look for. I tend to avoid sharing anything that says “share this if…” That’s because I hate being manipulated, even if it’s for a good cause. Sounds as if you have good protective instincts.
You asked for war-stories from males getting female come-ons online. I hope I can serve the turn!
Frankly, these people (I think of them as women, but that’s just my Y chromosome talking) are really teaching me how to write! Very short, incisive friendly clips, maybe came from a tweet, include one compliment (e.g. “I really like your profile photo”) and then just that one picture.
It’s genius! Sizzle without steak, they conjure the entire image of a happy relationship with an economy of prose that Robert E. Howard would have saluted. (And probably written back to, poor lonely guy.) I have two Friend requests in my queue that don’t even pretend- just a lovely profile photo and nothing else on ‘her’ wall. Point is, it’s a great photo! What else does she need? It either works or it doesn’t, what words could improve on that?
To date, I haven’t accepted either one.
But neither have I deleted the requests!
Will–Haha! I’m sure it’s the same people writing to men and women, so I know that “economy of words.” And you know what? I haven’t deleted all of them either. I’m sure that’s because we’re writers. I find the syntax fascinating and figure I might be able to use them in writing somehow–just the way you have.
And those are definitely great photos. They steal the male photos from corporate and military websites, but some of those “women” look like they’re lifted right out of fashion catalogues.
I save some troll messages for the same reason. In So Much For Buckingham, I took some of the troll reviews right off Goodreads. The language is often hilariously illiterate.
‘Help, I’ve been robbed in a foreign country.’ Yes, Anne, I get them all the time. What’s amusing is that the scammer can’t replicate the idiom of the person concerned so the email’s language is usually absurd. I got one recently, allegedly from a friend – a professor of literature – that started ‘Hi!’. That good lady would sooner have died than utter such a vulgarity. Of course, another giveaway is that they never address us by our true name. Wouldn’t our friend know it?
I once kept all my scam emails in a folder. Some were very inventive. Who could resist the appeal of a US lieutenant who’d chanced upon a buried treasure in Iraq? Or the London monk who wanted my help in verifying a long forgotten relic of St Thomas a Beckett (and gave me a real London address, which proved to be that of a degree mill college)? If only they’d gone into fiction writing…
I’ve read that one key to a criminal message is that it will, deliberately, contain a syntax or spelling error. Why? No intelligent person will respond to it. (Scammers don’t want intelligent respondees.They mean trouble.) But idiots won’t notice. And that’s who scammers prey on.
John–You seem to get a much higher class of fraudsters than I do. How creative! Buried treasure in Iraq and the remains of Thomas a Beckett! Those are prize winning stories, for sure. 🙂
Very interesting that they deliberately put errors in the message because they WANT the uneducated. Kind of like a US political candidate who must not be named who recently said “I love the undereducated. They’re my best people. The best!”
Ay, Mr Trump is much maligned. (Being British, I can name him.) A brilliant article in the UK Times last week pointed out – with semantic analyses, no less – that Trump had deliberately dumbed down his language in the past year to appeal to the Homer Simpsons. His speeches circa 2010 were almost erudite. Which other demagogue does that remind us of? 🙁
Anne, I have run into most of these scams. Sometimes, I have had to stop and think, is this for real? Dr. Phil (yes, I watch Dr. Phil) refers to men who try and scam woman with love letters in return for “send me money” are called catfish. It happens all the time.
Tracy–I’ve heard the term “catfish” but I didn’t realize that meant social media Romeos like this. They’re so transparent. It’s amazing that anybody falls for them.
Oh, this is a good post, Anne. I just had my second or third FB direct message experience the other day from some guy who said he was a member of some high-level government agency. After a few sentences back and forth he said that the best thing about waking up in the morning was thinking about me. I was like, WHAT? after two sentences during which time I told him I was married? It was actually quite humorous and I blocked him and that was that. It’s sad that there are women out there who will actually fall for this crap, but….
Patti
Patricia–It seems to be part of the scam that they especially target married women. As soon as you say you’re married, it sets off the over-the-top love letters. At least 10 women I know have had the same experience. I guess they figure married women make a good target because they’ll want to keep things secret..
We talk about the importance of being on social media and Facebook, but you point out so well how we really need to be careful out there. I’ve fallen for a couple of these scams when I first joined FB but wised up fast…no harm done. Especially appreciate your tips for resolving these scams. I block and delete; must remember to report them, too.
Cat–That’s so true. This is especially true of new writers whose publishers tell them they have to be on social media. They don’t really want to be there and don’t know the rules and they’re afraid of scaring off any potential readers.
Reporting abuse is important. FB usually responds right away. I don’t know what happened with that guy who spoke to the New York Times and said he couldn’t get a spoofed profile taken down. He may not have reported through their automated system, so the complaint got lost.
One I’ve seen floating around a lot lately is similar to the charity one – all you have to do is share a post and you get a $X off coupon to some store. After you click on the link, you’re asked to enter in the emails of 20 friends.
Common sense says that first, no store would give out a $50-100 off coupon online. And second, you should never share your friends’ email addresses without their permission.
My rule is that if an offer seems too good to be true, like someone willing to give you or a charity lots of free money just for clicking on or sharing something, it probably is. If you’re not sure whether something is legitimate, just Google it – although it’s probably not real. Sorry, Nigerian princes. 🙁
E.D.–Thanks for this one! I’ve seen some of those coupon things but didn’t think much about it. I didn’t realize they were trolling for email addresses. “Sell out all your friends for $50!” I guess some people must do it. These scams wouldn’t exist unless there were people who fall for them. And somebody, somewhere must have given their bank information to that Nigerian prince. 🙂
I just have to share this: The funniest, most clueless “catfisher” (romantic scammer) who ever contacted me used a profile photo from a stock photo site… wait for it… that had the site’s proprietary watermark still emblazoned across its face. I’ve gotten as many as 3-5 a day of these (not the watermark–that was special) and you learn to spot them.
One good trick I learned was to open his photo of himself or his supposed mansion or whatever, (if unsure) right-click it, and do a “reverse image search” on it. You’ll find that the guy in the photo has twenty profiles across social media in twenty different names and that “his mansion” is a music conservatory in Belgium.
Catherine—Ooooh–the watermark is priceless. That’s as good as General William aka Abdul Mohamed.
And thanks for the great tip! I’m going to try right-clicking on some of my fraudsters and find out where those photos were stolen from.
Thank you very much for this post, Anne. We’re all human, and the “bad guys” are often good psychologists — anybody can fall for a scam.
Several years ago a terrible scam was going around in Russia: they’d call you and say that your son (daughter, brother, etc.) is held captive (they wouldn’t just say “son,” they’d also give your son’s name), and then of course demand money. I personally know a person who received a call like that. He tried to contact his son after the call, but there was no answer. And even though he was 99% sure it was a scam, he didn’t want to risk the 1%.
It wasn’t strictly speaking a social media scam, but most probably social media related — that’s how the scammers knew the names, relations, phone numbers, and even the fact that the mobile would be out of reach at a certain time.
On a happier note, thanks very much for the congrats, Anne 🙂
Sasha–Congrats on your awesome win!
You’re right that these scams are older than social media and they’re perpetrated via phone too. In Russia I can imagine people might believe the “captive” story. Here they target grandparents and usually say that the “grandchild” is in jail. Same scam, slightly different script. It’s a nasty one.
It might have been the same scam. It’s been some years and I don’t remember all the details, but after I submitted the comment I realized I said “son” and it was actually “grandson.” That’s what made it even worse — the scammers targeting grandparents. Nasty stuff.
Thanks again! It was a fun competition 🙂
This kind of stuff makes me sad.
Southpaw–You’re right it is sad. Especially since some of these people are obviously clever and creative and could be doing something useful with their lives. 🙁
Good post, Anne. I have to admit, I didn’t know about the animal abuse scam. That was a new one on me. And I did fall a GI friending me on FB. I don’t think he was a foreigner but he went straight into the let’s get married thing. I was just trying to be nice to a guy I thought was overseas and missing home. Needless to say I unfriended him and changed my settings.
You’re right though, there are so many scams out there that I think we get numb to them – and don’t even notice them anymore. Now, you’ve got me thinking…I think I’ll scroll through my FB feed looking for them and report back. 😀
WriterChick–These people know how to manipulate good people. They use our kindness and empathetic nature against us. The “lonely GI” seems to be one of the most popular scams. It may be that more people are kind than greedy, so they may rope in more victims with the GI profile than the CEO ones. The majority of the fraudsters I get are the phony GIs.
It’s kind of fun to go through those old DMs and read the outrageous things these people come up with. Pretty hilarious as long as you don’t fall for them.
Usually the easiest way for me to confirm a fake friend request (because I’m seriously anal about my friend list and have actually purged those who simply collect friends for the sake of collecting friends) is to go to their page and check out their timeline. Usually the born on date is this year. Then I execute the following steps:
1} delete the request;
2} report the request;
3} block the request. This can be tricky, because sometimes if you enter the name, multiples of the same name crop up, so you really have to memorize what the particular avatar is so that you don’t inadvertently block the wrong person.
G. B.–So you’re prejudiced against newborn babies? 😉 Haha. I hadn’t even noticed that. What a major red flag! Great tip!
Everybody–check the Date of Birth of your new friend. If they were literally born yesterday, this “person” is a fraudster.
It’s also a good reminder to keep the tab open with the bogus profile so you don’t block a real person by mistake. Thanks for the important tips!
I’ve seen some of those scams. They can be sickening. It’s a pain to always have to keep your guard up, but you have to do it.
Lori–They are upsetting, because they always try to use a person’s best instincts against them. If you are kind or generous or care about soldiers or abused animals, they see you as prey. It gives us a very negative view of our species. But there must be a whole lot of good people and very few of these sociopaths, or it wouldn’t work for them.
That’s a good way of looking at it. The fewer, the better.
The MOST disgusting one I’ve been on the receiving end of was unexpectedly getting a friend request on Facebook from author Ann Crispin (I took a writing class from her in 2008, so we were ‘friends’ online).
Thing is…this was a couple of months after Ann died. I replied “Who is this?” to see if I could draw them out. The page had all her pictures and information (because it’s public; Ann was an author, and so everything on her author page was public), and a growing number of the same friends.
The person replied, “its me ann.”
#1, it obviously couldn’t have been Ann. It MIGHT have been her husband Michael (who now oversees her social media accounts) and there MIGHT have been a legitimate reason for the refriending, but he would NEVER have pretended to be Ann.
#2, no one legitimately in charge of her page would have replied with poor grammar and spelling.
Meanwhile, I reported it, and also went to Ann’s actual page and contacted her husband. Several others had done the same. The account was taken down some 20 minutes later.
But it was disGUSting. I still find myself thinking about it from time to time and wishing horrible things on the person who tried to prey on the grieving fans of a recently deceased author.
I got another one from an “Aunt” and helped her report the usurper who stole all her pictures and information. And I got a message from a “cousin” one day that he was trapped in Nigeria (HONESTLY? Do they not realize that instantly flags it as a scam?) and needed money. I blocked it.
And then, one day, my “mother” contacted me, and I thought it was the same thing as with Ann and my aunt and cousin. I went into full “skeptic mode” and kind of offended her by my harsh questions demanding that she identify herself. “What was my dog’s name in kindergarten? Who was my best friend in second grade?” 🙂 (She had forgotten her password and I helped her get back into her legitimate account.)
Gary–I remember hearing about the person impersonating Ann Crispin after she died. I think maybe Victoria Strauss mentioned it on Writer Beware. Such a blatant fake, since Ann was a major force in the publishing world and everybody was mourning her death. (She did so much to keep writers safe with the Writer Beware blog.) Whoever spoofed her page must have had it backfire, big time.
I’ve also had a “friend” request from a relative with Alzheimer’s I knew was no longer able to use a computer.
Your poor mom though. She must have wondered what was up when you challenged her with all those questions. She may not have known about all the social media scams out there.
The most disturbing thing about the scammers is how it keeps going which means people are obviously falling for it. I wish I was clever enough to send a virus back to them through their links.
Susan–You do have to worry about these people who still fall for things like the Nigerian prince scam. You wonder if they’ve just arrived from Alpha Centauri. Some scams, like that one, use people’s greed against them, but most of these use their altruism. Most people will want to err on the side of kindness. And scammers know that and I guess that’s why it still works..
If only there were a way to boomerang their malware and viruses! I agree.
Thanks for a great blog. I shared it on all my social media sites.
Like you, I’m a writer so I will accept FB requests from strangers just in case the person may be a reader.
I’ve spoken out against the abused animals pictures, one of which I will NEVER get out of my head. I posted these so-called “Stop the abuse” posts are only giving a thrill to the abusers. After unfriending and blocking 2 accounts, I haven’t seen those kinds of pictures in a while.
But the amount of friend requests–many questionable–have skyrocketed in recent weeks. I get tired of going through the list to review each timeline and “About” to confirm the legitimacy! I’ve also noticed the men are adding a picture of themselves with “their” kids. But only one photo.Sheesh. People fall for this?
Not sure if this was clever or stupid of me. — After checking their timelines that seemed to have enough info to make them legit, I accepted several FB requests in one day last week, only to receive DMs from many of them. I took a screenshot of the list of “Hello Beautiful” DMs, and posted it in my replies to same men, writing: “Thank you for your interest. As you can see from this screenshot, I have many admirers requesting personal conversation which I can’t possibly accommodate. ” A few replied, “Thank you.” Only one wrote back: “And that is why I am here. How may I help?” I blocked him.
I don’t like the fake accounts following me on Google+ but, other than not following them back, I’m not sure what to do about them, or why they would follow me. Do you?
Same for Pinterest. I contacted Pinterest about a 2-3 dozen followers, mainly women with 6-10 posts about makeup or fashion and 1.2k – 1.6k of followers. Since the identical stats were too coincidental, Pinterest removed them. That was 6 months ago. I’ve noticed a couple dozen more fake accounts but Pinterest has requested each questionable account be reported individually. I don’t have time to do that!
Looking forward to your next report on more scammers.
Gillian–I haven’t seen those abused animal posts recently, either, but that may be because I blocked them too. I figured even if they were legit, I didn’t want stuff on my page I couldn’t unsee. Then I found out about the abuse sites. Appalling.
I agree the fake friend requests are an epidemic right now. And last week, as I was writing this piece, I did see a number with kids in their photos. I guess people are onto the combat zone photos, so they’re trying a new play for sympathy.
As far as Google Plus, we can’t do much to eliminate the spammers or the scammers, because they’ve “circled” us and we have no say over that. Refusing to circle back doesn’t eliminate them.
It’s one of the things about G+ I find most annoying. Some of them are porn sites and a little porny avatar will shows up on my book blog in the “following” widget. I can’t remove it. Just have to wait until more people circle me to drive the boobs out of the most recent twenty or whatever it is. Very annoying.
Those phony fashionistas on Pinterest are sort of a mystery to me. I’m glad you reported them. I’m not sure what they’re up to, other than amassing followers to sell.
Thanks for sharing your experiences with these scammers. Every bit of evidence helps us to recognize and report them.
Fantastic awareness post Anne. I posted about some of these issues awhile back to help spread awareness. I have more generals and army people following me on Google, DMing me on Twitter, and message alerts from the same on Skype! I’ve never responded to any of them for all the reasons you mention, but sadly many people just aren’t aware of these things.
I haven’t checked my filtered notifications on FB in ages because all I ever got was more of the same lonely hearts telling me how beautiful I was and wanting to friend me. Perhaps I should check it again in case a friend has slipped through the cracks, lol.
As writers trying to build an audience this stuff certainly puts us out there in the melting pot of social media.
I do make it a practice to check out profiles on every notification I get from new followers. Even on Twitter, I never just follow back anyone before checking their profile and sometimes their websites. It’s time consuming I’ll admit. But better safe than sorry. 🙂
Debby–I think I saw some of your warnings. Isn’t it amazing how many lonely Generals there are out there? Haha.
Every so often I get a real person sending me a “filtered” DM on FB. One woman had read a print copy of my book somebody left on a train. That was awesome.
It’s wise to check those Twitter profiles. Sometimes I don’t look carefully enough and it turns out to be somebody selling Twitter followers. I just got one yesterday. He said he was an author, so I figured he was following me because of the blog or my books, but then he sent me a DM saying he couldn’t support himself as an author so I should buy some Twitter followers from him. Yeah, guy. I’ll be sure to do that….after I unfollow you.
Lol Anne. You do seem to attract some beauties.
I check Twitter before I follow back. I follow all authors (real ones) back because I remember what it was like just starting out. I don’t follow any ‘Eggs’ or nonsense. You can check for nonsense by reading the first few tweets on their pages. I don’t often look at DMs because they are mostly selling something, or worse, as you know, lol. If I’m questioning legitimacy, I’ll then click on the website on their Twitter page to verify. Kind of like an FBI process, lol. 🙂
Great post, Anne. One of those ‘handsome’ servicemen has friended me on Google Plus, but I never followed or added him to my circles. However, how do I remove him from my followers? Is there a way to remove him? Thanks for all you do for the writing community. And I’m glad your travails with the blog have calmed down, and that things are now running smoothly! 🙂
Jan–They’re all over Google Plus at the moment. Just ignore them. As far as I know, there’s no way to remove somebody who has put you in their circles, so we just have to live with it. Thanks!
Thanks, Anne. Appreciate it. 🙂
Crazy stuff!
Nina–There’s a lot of creativity in some of these scams. Imagine what these people could do if they thought outside the fraudster box!
I”ve run into many of these on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. I normally only see the ones on Google+ — the retired military man or oil worker with few friends who wants to know me better. When I did not add to my circles, I wasn’t thinking scams — just no common interests. I wondered why they were bothering to add me to their circles.
Facebook is trickier. I can recognize the scams in my feed that my friends were taken in by, and I let them know they’ve been hacked. Usually they’ve already figured it out. When you are in a lot of FB groups with people who don’t always post, you get many friend requests from names you don’t recognize. I usually stick to accepting the requests from people I’ve seen interacting in those groups, and I check to make sure they are not already on my friends list. It doesn’t matter to me how many of my other friends they may have duped into accepting a request. On my personal account, I like to stick to friends I know I have something in common with or know personally.
Barbara–You’re lucky you’re not on the radar of the FB Lotharios. I dread going to FB every morning because I’ll always have two or three. Once the page refreshed while I was hitting “decline” and I hit “approve” instead and within seconds I had a DM from him telling me I was soooo beautiful and he wanted to get to know me better. One more annoying thing I have to do every morning. Always military or oil rig backgrounds. Sometimes with small children or puppies.
The spoofed friends page thing is becoming an epidemic too. I can’t believe there are still people who don’t know about it and will accept a “friend” they’ve been interacting with for years. There’s a place to report the fake profile to FB. It’s the three dots on the far right of the white window right on the profile header. Just hit “report abuse” and choose”This person is pretending to be my friend.” They will contact your friend and take down the spoofed profile.
As authors, we don’t want to be rude to our readers or potential readers, so we need to be careful, but there are tell-tale signs of fake profiles–only one or two photos, no interests, Born and working and going to school in wildly different and unlikely places. And two first names. These guys always have two first names.