Scammers are increasingly targeting Facebook Groups with their garbage. You might find them in neighborhood for-sale groups, community groups, or even in common-interest groups like ones that post schedules for food trucks.
But they aren’t starting off directly with scams, they’re instead posting highly shareable posts. A recent favorite is this warning about a rattler found in a plant. I’ve seen it posted with over a dozen locations along with instructions to share. Of course, folks do.
You’ll also see a lot of lost dog posts, like this one. Again, I’ve seen this one with probably 20 locations listed.
They even went so far as to try a missing child post.
A friend of mine recently asked a good question. “I wish I understood what these scammers gain by posting lost dogs, or now today it is an actual child??!! They post them on every garage sale site they can get away with!”
The reasoning behind the posts is that these are types of posts people tend to share, react to, or comment on. And the more someone interacts with your posts, the higher up in the feed of the group, your future posts will be boosted. The next time you post, people who have interacted with your previous posts are way more likely to see them.
That’s when these scammers can go to work, posting their job, rental, and sales scams.
There is a new twist on an old scam. There post a picture of a vehicle or other item at very reasonable or cheap price. When you reply to inquire about item you get a story death in family need to get rid of Item as they are out of state in military only have access to email due to duty requirements you get an invoice supposedly from Ebay and you are given a n address for Ebay (Spelled eBay ) by double checking with Ebay invoice is not legit. These two items plus photos of vehicle I spotted a phishing scam . Remember if it seems to be good to be true it usually isn’t