Scams That Target Small Business Owners on Facebook
Frivolous Scams and How to Spot Them.
My original title for this blog post was going to be Indiana Devore and the Spam Bots of Doom, but on second thought, I realized that this isn’t a very good title for SEO, and it doesn’t matter if your blog post has a great title if no one ever reads it…
At the time of writing this, I currently manage six different social media accounts (all of which are on both Facebook and Instagram), and while I won’t claim to have seen every type of social media scam, I have definitely seen my fill. I’ll limit this discussion to scams that target business pages, since that’s where most of my expertise is, but maybe it will give you some insight into the mind of scammers in general.
I’ll start with saying that scammers main weapon is ignorance. The tactics they use depend on the average person not knowing the how certain aspects of Facebook/Instagram work. These apps don’t come with instruction manuals. We’re largely dependent on external sources of information (such as blogs like this one) or the occasional randomly-generated instructional pop-up on you Facebook page for guidance on how the “backend” of Meta works. And because features are constantly being updated and rearranged without any notification, it’s easy for scammers to sneak in fraudulent messages that seem legitimate to unsuspecting page owners.
In the paragraphs below, I’m going to detail a few different scam/spam tactics that I’ve encountered over the last few years and explain how you can verify their illegitimacy and protect yourself and your page.
Scam #1: “Your page is scheduled for permanent deletion”
A screenshot of one of the MANY spam messages I receive through Facebook Messenger.
This is the most common Facebook scam message. They are usually variations of the message above pretending to be from Meta (sometimes the profile name actually says “Meta” or “Facebook” or “Account Status”) warning you that your page was about to be deleted because of copyright infringement or a community standards violation and providing a link that will allow you to appeal. If you remember nothing else from this blog post, remember the following: DO NOT CLICK ON STRANGE LINKS!
The next thing to remember is that, at the time of writing this, META DOES NOT USE MESSENGER to communicate with users about page status or profile information. If you have actually violated their community standards or committed some form of copyright infringement, they will likely notify you through email, and with a notification on your profile. You can also check your page status whenever you want to verify that you haven’t actually done something that has landed you in Facebook or Instagram jail.
How to check your page status on Facebook (desktop only)
Go to your facebook page (make sure you’re logged in as the page in question), and follow these steps.
Professional Dashboard (left menu) > Page Recommendation (left menu) > Page Status (main screen under “More About Your Page”)
Once you open page status, you can see if there are any violations on your page, and your page’s status. Once you’ve confirmed that your page has a clean bill of health, you can go back to your inbox, mark the scammer as spam, block their profile and delete the conversation.
A little aside here, I find it really dumb that Facebook hides this behind the “new pages experience” tab (along with several other useful features) especially considering that they’re going to have to change this at some point because the “new pages experience” won’t always be new. It’s already more than a year old.
How to check your Instagram Account Status
To check your instagram account's status, all you have to do is go to the settings tab (the three stacked lines) and scroll down to “account status.” I’ll admit, I haven’t seen any scam messages coming through Instagram about my account status, but no sense in waiting till the last minute.
Scam #1.5: The Fraudulent Post-Tag
This scam tries sending you the same message as Scam #1 with a different delivery system. Rather than sending you a message saying that your account is in trouble, the scammer creates a Facebook post from an official sounding account and tags your business (and dozens of others) in a post saying that you have violated community standards, click this link to resolve the issue. This sounds dumb (Facebook obviously doesn’t tag you in a post alongside tons of other businesses to tell you that you’ve done something wrong) but it’s actually more clever than you would think. When you DO have a community standards violation on your Facebook page, you’ll get a notification from Facebook in your account, the same place where you are notified of likes, comments and tags. So the scammer is counting on you seeing a notification that looks like it’s related to your “account status” (because that’s what they’ve named their fake account) and getting upset and not looking too closely at the rest of the post because you just want to resolve the problem ASAP.
A variation on this scam is scammers just being jerks in general and tagging you in a photo of mostly-nude women for no reason. I had a few weeks where multiple pages I managed were being tagged in gratuitous photos of women breastfeading (the ONE exception to Facebook’s standards on nudity so you can’t report the post). I don’t know why the scammers do it, they didn’t include any fraudulent links to click or weird friend requests. Maybe they were trying to justify all the messages they sent me about violating Facebooks Community standards. Or maybe some scammer’s teenage son got hold of the computer, I don’t know.
Dealing with Fraudulent Tags on Facebook
How to remove a tag from a Facebook Post
Go to the post in question (make sure you’re logged in as the right account)
Click the … in the top right corner of the post.
Choose “remove tag.”
I always go the extra mile and also “report post” as well. You’ll notice that the reasons given often don’t quite align with what the post is (I suspect that the scammers do their best to make sure that their posts don’t easily fall into any of the categories). Just choose the best one (scam or fraud if that’s an option) and submit. Let the people at Meta sort it out themselves.
I also take the extra step of going to the Facebook profile that made the fraudulent post ant reporting the profile too. What can I say? I like to be thorough.
How to remove a tag from an Instagram Post
to to eh post in question
click the … in the top right corner of the post
choose “Tag options'“
Choose “Remove me from post”
If your sure that the tag is fraudulent, go ahead and report the post as well.
Now Meta does try to remove fake posts and accounts quickly (sometimes before I even have a chance to report them), but they can’t always keep up with the volume and all the different types of scams, and if some aren’t reported they’ll never disappear. I know it is SUPER TEDIOUS to deal with and report every single one of these, but the fact is that when a customer comes across your page and spots a lingering spam comment or tag, it doesn’t reflect well on your page’s overall quality.
Scam #2: Fake Event Admins (and fake ticket holders)
Basically, this scammer will comment on a Facebook event claiming to be an event admin and you should pay them directly, not anyone else claiming to be associated with the event. These scams can apply to any Facebook event, but I notice that they are especially common on events like artisan markets or craft fairs where there are multiple hosts/vendors. I’ve promoted enough events on social media to know that this scam is pretty pervasive right now, to the point where scammers are adapting their strategy and pretending to be moderators and warning people about scammers (while also insisting that they are the event admin when they are not).
Another variation on this scam is people who claim to have tickets for an event that they can’t use and asking people who want some free tickets to send them a DM. This seems less harmful than outright trying to steal an event organizer’s money, but it’s a way that scammers try to connect with personal accounts and then try to send them fraudulent links or, worse yet, try to lure someone into a meeting.
What’s difficult about this scam is that, while the fake comments are easy to spot and delete, thy just keep popping up on your event posts until the event date has come and gone. If you have collaborators or co-hosts for the event, the scammers will comment on all of their posts as well.
So whenever your Facebook page has an event, I highly recommend that you adjust the settings so that only event hosts can post within the event, and then monitor comments on any event-related posts until the date has passed. You will likely have to report and delete multiple comments on the same event post throughout it’s lifetime.
It’s tedious, but be vigilant. The last thing you want is for one of your customers or event collaborators to fall victim to a scammer pretending to represent you.
Scam #3: Fraudulent Reviews or Review Comments
Fake reviews will leave a glowing review for something that’s totally unrelated to your business and then provide a link for people to click on to enjoy it themselves. There are different variations of these, but the ones I’ve seen the most are people pushing cryptocurrencies or pyramids schemes. The really unfortunate part of this is that there’s not very much you can do…Because Facebook is trying to promote a fair environment that lets people leave honest reviews (both good and bad) they don’t give page owners the power to delete reviews. The most you can do is click the … in the top right corner of the post and click “report post.” Then you have to sit back and hope that Facebook does what they’re supposed to do, but there are no guarantees…
The more disturbing trend I’ve seen is people leaving fraudulent comments on reviews. Take a look at the screenshots below.
Scams aside, the use of emojis is pretty cringe…
Fun fact, William B Garret is a former US general. This isn’t actually William B. Garrett III.
This miiiiiiight seem like a legit comment in and of itself, but when you’ve seen the same message (with slight variations) over a dozen times, a pattern starts to emerge. These comments always appear on posts or comments from slightly older women. The scammer who is trying to start a conversation with someone which will end in their asking for money. Scam or no scam, this is just creepy. The scammers like to specifically comment on Facebook reviews because they know that you (the page owner) aren’t able to delete the original review or the comments on the review.
This scam isn’t as frequent as the others (I assume the scammers only target certain accounts and try to stay under the radar to keep people ignorant) and I honestly thought that it had died out, but this second screenshot is only a couple weeks old. The hilarious thing is that this “friendly” comment was posted on an extremely negative, rather vindictive, ranting and raving review for a local church. Before you ask, no the reviewer’s name was not Karen.
Scam #4: Can I Venmo You?
I have seen an increasing number of targeted scams that come through Messenger, specifically to businesses that aren’t setup for e-commerce. The initial message will invlude a picture from one of your own posts and ask if an item is available. Then they’ll ask “do you ship?” Then they’ll ask if they can pay through venmo or paypal rather than using a credit card. There are a few different forms that this scam can take, many involve telling you that they’ve sent the money and sending a fake confirmation to you before asking you to refund the money for whatever reason, when in reality they never paid you in the first place. The other version I’ve seen is that they’ll pay you through Venmo, then tell Venmo that you fraudulently charged them, and then chaos ensues.
Spotting the Scam: Check the profile of the account sending you the message. Often, the account won’t necessarily be brand new but it won’t be that old. There won’t be any posts or personal information available. They’ll have lots of friends but the names sound generic or fake. If someone insists that they can only pay you through venmo or paypal and cannot pay by credit card, that’s a big red flag. If they give you a shipping address, check it on google maps. If it isn’t a real address or a non-residential address, that’s another tell. (I once had a scammer send me an address in the New York City Department of Records…probably not their shipping/billing address…) A blanket question you can ask to weed out the scammers is to ask for a phone number or email so you can call them to take their payment/shipping information over the phone. I’ve found that these scammers don’t give out real email addresses or phone numbers because…well, what they’re doing is illegal.
When you’re confident you’ve been talking with a scammer, take a moment to report the profile on Facebook/Instagram as fraudulent. It doesn’t necessarily do much to punish the scammer (they’ll just move on to one of their many other fake accounts to continue what they’re doing) but I figure every little bit helps and every scam account that gets reported is another opportunity to show Meta what kind of accounts it needs to be suspicious of.
Spam #1: Promote it on @instagramaccount
This isn’t technically a scam, but it’s definitely spam of the highest order. It’s not quite as common as it once was, but it’s still definitely a thing. There are marketing accounts who have setup bots to monitor certain hashtags, and whenever they see a post that uses that hashtag, they comment on it: promote it on @insertinstagramaccounthere. These accounts are trying to take advantage of the fact that the Instagram algorithm values users who comment on posts over the users who made the post in the first place. So they’re trying to use your hard work to boost their own presence. People have argued over whether or not it’s worth deleting these comments, but these little AI spam bots really get under my skin so I’m more than happy to take a few minutes to block them and then delete the comment.
Final Thoughts
The fight against scammers can feel like a losing battle. No matter how many reports you submit to Meta, the scams just keep coming. But the penalty for not responding is pretty high. Once a scammer knows you won’t take action against them, they will never stop hounding you or your customers. It’s annoying, it’s tedious, and it’s disheartening. Welcome to the internet.
Remember, I’m pulling for ya. We’re all in this together.
Mary
This blog was written by a HUMAN BEING, not an AI bot.