Social Media Scams: Why Adding Random People is Risky

Social media scams are all too common. According to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), people reported in the first six months of 2020 losing a record high of $117 million to scams that began on social media. These scams can vary in type, but many of them start with sending an unsuspecting victim a simple “friend request” using a fake profile. Accepting a social media request from someone you don’t know isn’t inherently dangerous, but it’s often the start of a scam. If you’re smart about how you use your social media accounts and stick to some basic privacy tips, you can avoid social media scams. The Internet and social media have made our lives both easier and more dangerous. Social media platforms have unfortunately become a haven for scams, where fraudsters prey on users’ desires to make new “friends” or gain followers and how trusting users are of social networking sites. The most common types of scams on social media are: If someone you’ve never met or seen before requests to connect with you on social media, you might wonder: What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe nothing happens, and this person just wants to boost their number of friends, or they want you to follow them back. It could be more nefarious than that. If your social profile is set so only accepted friends and followers can see your posts, accepting a random person lets a stranger see personal content. They’ll see who your friends and family are, important information about you like the town you live in or your birthday, and even photos of you. All of these details are exactly what someone needs to pull off a scam. LinkedIn is a professional networking site, so most people don’t use it the same way they use Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. You may keep all the content you post on LinkedIn strictly professional, where on Facebook you share details about your personal life. To make it simple: If you use a platform to share content related to your personal life that you don’t want just anyone to see, you probably shouldn’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know on that platform. On LinkedIn, it’s more acceptable to accept connection requests from people you’ve never met — with the caveat that they have a reason for reaching out. A quick image search on their profile photo can help you see if it’s legitimate. Also, make sure that they have linked their profile to at least one company page. If you get a request from an unknown person to be “friends” or follow you, you don’t have to delete it right away. You can use these tips to assess whether their account looks suspicious or not: When in doubt, don’t add someone you don’t know. If it turns out to be someone you’ve met but don’t remember, and they are trying to reach out to you, they’ll find another way to contact you. If you don’t want to get requests from strangers on social media, you can beef up your privacy settings so your profile is harder to find. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn all allow you to set your profile to “private” so it can’t be seen unless someone is approved by you or friends with you. When all your information is public, scammers can use it to try to bait you. On every platform, remove your home address and personal phone number. Or, make them only visible to you. On Facebook, you can change a privacy setting to block requests from strangers. Here’s how: This method isn’t completely foolproof. If one of your Facebook friends has already fallen victim to a scammer, that scammer will still be able to send you a request. Facebook also lets you change your settings so your profile doesn’t show up in Google searches. Go to Settings > Privacy > Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile? > Edit . Click to check the box to Turn Off . After you learn the risks of adding unknown people on social media, it’s up to you to decide if it’s worthwhile adding them. In most cases, it’s better not to add a stranger on Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, or Instagram, but you don’t have to have a “no strangers” policy. Be cautious and take proactive measures to avoid getting scammed by increasing the privacy of your account.