TikTok’s fast-paced environment is perfect for quick entertainment, but it’s also a breeding ground for scammers who prey on younger users who may not recognize the warning signs of a scam. These scams come in various forms, from fake giveaways to phishing attacks and investment schemes.
Fake Giveaways: Scammers create fake accounts pretending to be popular influencers or brands. They’ll announce a giveaway, promising enticing prizes like the latest smartphones, gaming consoles, or large sums of money. To enter, they ask users to follow their account, like a post, and provide personal information. The catch? The giveaway doesn’t exist, and the scammer is just collecting personal data that can be used for identity theft or sold to other criminals.
Phishing Scams: Phishing scams on TikTok often appear as direct messages from fake TikTok support accounts. The message might claim that the user’s account is at risk of being banned unless they verify their login details or click a link to “secure” their account. These links usually lead to fake websites designed to steal usernames and passwords. Once the scammer has this information, they can lock the real user out of their account and use it to scam others.
A friend’s child recently fell victim to scammers who pretended to be a friend of the family in need of help to get her information. The scammer then used that info to hijack her account and hit up friends and family members for money and their information. Unfortunately, several friends actually sent the money before she was able to gain control of her account.
Scammers can hijack images and video to impersonate your friends and relatives and even us AI to alter them so it appears you’re speaking with someone you know.
Investment Scams: Scammers also use TikTok to promote get-rich-quick schemes. They might promise huge returns on small investments, encouraging users to send money through apps like PayPal, Venmo, or even cryptocurrency. These scams often target teenagers who may be eager to make money quickly, only to end up losing their money with no way to get it back.
What Parents Can Do: To keep kids safe on TikTok, talk to them about how to spot scams. Teach them to be cautious about giveaways that seem too good to be true and to never share personal information with accounts they don’t know. Encourage them to ignore messages from accounts claiming to be TikTok support, and always verify if something seems suspicious. Regularly review their privacy settings and remind them to use strong, unique passwords for their accounts.
Hi Cyn, thank you for such great information. I have a problem. My wife was running an older pc with windows 8. Recently it was unable to run windows. I was able to use dos commands to run backup and reinstall windows. Since that happened her back accounts were locked and passwordschanged. She contacted fraud division of bank. They unlocked her account and she changed the password and was back in. The next day she got a message that her new password was changed again and she was locked out. This time we went to the bank and closed the accounts and opened new ones with 2 factor security. Several thousand dollars was taken using zelle. The money was replaced and 2 days later another bank contacted us that someone had opened an account in my wife’s name.
We think it’s under control. My issue is I believe a key logger was installed on her pc. We’ve disconnected it and shut it down. I would like to retrieve some files off her hard drive. Do you think I risk infecting my laptop if I get files from her drive?
Thanks for listening
Kim Horn