Protecting Yourself from Fraud on Social Networks

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I want to start this post out by saying that by in large the great majority of people you will come across through social networks and social networking are by in far fabulous people. As in all communities there are a few individuals who choose for whatever reason to participate in fraud or even criminal activity. Recently on Facebook I came across such an individual. I believe to be forewarned is to be empowered. I know some friends who are afraid to be on Facebook because they are concerned about security and perhaps encountering undesirable individuals.

By informing yourself and intelligent use of the privacy settings offered by Facebook, you can be assured to have a pleasant and safe social media experience. I will cover the privacy settings of Facebook in a later post however in this post I want to cover a scam that a few individuals attempt to use on Facebook and other social networks and how you can protect yourself from not falling prey to it.

Right before Christmas, I was checking my Facebook profile and a text came up from a good friend of mine. It was odd because my friend said, they were not doing well. I asked why and they said they were in London Britain and had just been mugged. Though I thought this was a bit out of the norm, I knew my friend had just written a book and thought she might be traveling as part of her new book promotion.

As the conversation continued it seemed when I asked certain questions she did not respond directly to my questions but simply kept asking me if I could help her by wiring her money. When I asked how much she stated $940.00 which was to pay for her hotel bill since she explained her credit cards and wallet had been stolen during the mugging. I asked her how would she identify herself without her credentials. She then indicated she still had her passport.

When I indicated I could not do the full amount on such short notice but was there someone I could call for her? She said, there was no one. This was the first point where I knew this seemed odd. I knew my friend had numerous friends and family that would love nothing more to help come to her aid. The individual posing as my friend was doing an excellent job of creating urgency and my desire to help pulled me in further. We were even talking about a smaller amount of money and how to wire the funds to her but I was starting to feel that things were not adding up.

I realized I needed to bounce this off my husband and once discussing it with him I realized I needed to verify the identity of the person perhaps posing as my friend. I asked a question of them that only my friend would know the answer to and the response back was “o.k. bye”. We knew right then it was a complete fraud.

I then called my friend on her cell and left her a message. She called us back and was right here at home and had learned that someone had hacked into her Facebook account and was using it to try to get funds from friends using this deception.

To protect yourself if you are ever contacted through any social network by a person posing as your friend and asking for money, always check their identity. Ask a question only your friend would know the answer to. Be sure to ask a question that the person posing as their friend could not get through their profile.

Anytime someone asks you for money, check out all the facts first. Don’t let yourself get pressured by the use of urgency that it must be done right now. The other way the individual put pressure on me to respond quickly was to tell me their flight was about to leave within two hours. Again, never allow pressure to respond quickly to have you make an unwise decision.

Report any activity you believe may be fraud. Facebook has a link to report suspicious activities. Also, to protect your account from being hacked into, use a complex password. Too often we use pass words which are too easy to hack. If you are a Mac or Apple user there is an excellent software program called One Password. This program allows you to employ complex pass words on all your accounts but to open up this program with one pass word which is easy for you to remember. This creates super security for you and simplicity of use.

Lastly, if something doesn’t feel right, honor that feeling and never allow yourself to be pressured in doing something you do not feel comfortable doing. We all need to listen more to our intuition which is there to protect us. I have found that social networks are self regulating and naturally the individuals within the network protect each other. I discovered shortly after this experience several warnings by other members of our Facebook community to watch out for this type of fraud. A social network is similar to your neighborhood watch. People do watch out for each other within the community.

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