Social media scams: How to defend yourself against this emerging fraud

Spam accounts often follow a lot of people in order to draw attention to themselves. If a new account that interacts with you follows a lot of people but has hardly any followers, it usually means the account is not legitimate.

Most social media accounts have descriptions to give viewers a little information about the profile. For real people, this usually includes where they’re from, some information about family or friends, or an organization they are closely related to, such as a college or religious group.

For scam accounts, these descriptions are often generic. Phrases such as “Sports Fan!” and “Fun to chat with!” are common examples of generic phrases used by scam accounts. If a description lacks details and seems generic and impersonal, consider the strong possibility that the account is not a real person. 

This might sound funny, but in all seriousness, how often have you unironically sent a text with multiple emojis in it? One similarity among most scam profiles is the messages they send and their profiles almost always use multiple emojis. If you encounter an account or a message with multiple emojis, it’s probably because it’s a scam. 

Links can be tricky because many real accounts have links in their bio that direct people to their other media accounts. It is common to see links from sites such as LinkedIn, Instagram and VSCO in people’s bios. However, this makes it more difficult to identify which links are legitimate and which are scams. 

Scam links often impersonate legitimate websites, so they will often use similar spellings to try and trick users into clicking on links thinking it’s a different website. For example, they will use Lynkedin.com to impersonate LinkedIn.com. Checking for these intentional misspellings can help you identify whether a link is legitimate. Also, scam links will often be from domains that are not well known. Don’t click a link if you aren’t absolutely positive it’s legitimate. 

Many social media sites have features where you can see if accounts also follow or are followed by someone you follow. If you don’t know who the person is and you have 0 mutual connections, it’s better to play it safe and not interact with them. 

One common way to identify a scam account is to look at the nature of their content. Many scammers will post and send sexually suggestive content to take advantage of people’s natural curiosity. Avoid any unknown account that promotes highly sexualized content.

If an account reaches out to you and asks something with a sense of urgency, the odds are it is not legitimate. Scam accounts will often add a sense of urgency to their message to try and scare you or excite you into making a decision. They will say things such as, “You have an outstanding payment due immediately,” or “This offer is only good for 30 minutes, so act fast,” to try and get you to make an impulse decision without any critical thought. If an account reaches out with an urgent message, it’s likely not legitimate.

When you identify a scam account that either follows or messages you, the first course of action you should take is to block and report the account. Blocking is for your own safety; it makes sure that the account cannot continue to harass you with requests. Reporting is a very powerful tool as well; if an account is reported as a scam, the IP address linked to the account could be banned from creating future accounts. This means that reporting could stop the creation of a few future scam accounts.

Many popular social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, allow you to make the account private. This means that only your followers can access your profile. While you can still receive requests from outside accounts, making your account private can greatly reduce your exposure to fraudulent activity because the algorithms will recommend your account less to people who do not share mutual followers and followings with you.

If a spam account follows you, just block it. If you get a spam DM, just report it and block the sender. When you do anything else that interacts with the profile, even just viewing it more than once, that signals to the social media algorithm that you’re interested in accounts similar to the one you viewed. This means that the more you interact with spam accounts, the more your profile will be recommended to them in the future, and the more you will be harassed by spam messages and requests. 

The first lesson I remember my mom teaching me is to never take candy from a stranger. This is a great lesson, but everyone seems to forget about stranger danger the second they get online.

Much like how you would never eat something given to you by a random person on the street, you shouldn’t click on links sent to you or featured on random accounts. These links often contain malware, viruses and programs that are designed to compromise your passwords, steal your information and gain access to your accounts.

One of the most popular scams on social media occurs when accounts send you DMs stating that you’ve either won a giveaway or been selected for a special event. In these situations, the account does not immediately present the scam to lull you into a false sense of security, however they almost always end up asking for your information: passwords, credit card numbers, banking information, sensitive personal information, etc.

The best way to deal with this is to simply not respond and block the user. If anyone you don’t know asks you for sensitive information, simply block and report them. There is never a reason to give banking details over social media DMs, no matter how convincing they may sound. 

Another common scam occurs when someone attempts to take over your account and steal your passwords. This usually occurs when you click an advertised link, which puts software on your device that gives a scammer access to your accounts.

In this situation, it’s best to delete the account. While this might seem drastic, it is very hard to assure the safety of an account once the password has been compromised. Because of this, in the event of a takeover, it’s best to make a new account. 

For many reasons, this might not be an option. If you’re unable to make a new account and delete the old one, you should change the password as soon as possible. This is not limited to the account that got compromised, but you should also update the passwords of any other accounts you have that share a similar password to the one stolen. This ensures that scammers can no longer access the account which should mitigate the damage they can do. 

After changing the password, you should still monitor the activity on the account closely for the next few weeks to make sure that no suspicious activity is taking place. If changing the password does not eliminate suspicious activity, you should reach out to the support team of the website to get help with further action. 

Viruses are the end result of many internet-based scams. They upload software to your device with the aim of extracting private information. Viruses are not always apparent or inherently harmful, however they will almost always hinder the performance of your device, and as a result, defensive measures should always be taken. In the context of social media scams, viruses will invade your device if you click a link from a scam account. If a link is ever pressed, even if it appears harmless, you should always download and run an antivirus program. 

Anti-virus software works by identifying and eliminating malicious code on your device. This helps to prevent viruses from deleting files, using memory, slowing processing speeds, or any of the other harmful effects they have. Paid softwares such as Norton and McAfee are the most reliable, however free antivirus software, such as Avast antivirus, are solid options as well.

Regardless of whether you’re willing to pay or not, antivirus software should always be downloaded if you suspect a virus on your device, as it is the most consistent way to guarantee your device’s safety. 

Unfortunately, scammers often steal banking details online. Whether it’s extracted via a virus or stolen when a user puts their credit card number in a fake online shopping site, compromising your bank details is nothing but trouble. 

The moment you detect suspicious activity in your bank accounts, the first thing you should do is freeze the account or card in question. This makes sure that you stop the scammer from using your account any further. You may be able to do this online; you may need to call your credit or debit card issuer.

Additionally, if you suspect there might be fraudulent spending on your account, always contact your bank as soon as possible. Laws differ between credit cards and debit cards, and policies vary by bank, but usually these charges can be disputed and dropped if you act quickly enough.