The top 5 Facebook scams of 2015 - Page 2 of 2

Facebook, CNN and that charity will donate…

These scams have been around for a number of years, and whilst we thought we saw a decrease in their frequency back in latter 2013 and 2014, they have come back strong for 2015.

Most users will be familiar with the premise. A photo of a sick or injured child along with the caption that Facebook or CNN or a charity will donate money for likes and shares.

It’s not true. It’s never true. And the scammers who posted it are exploiting the photographed child in order to get likes for their Facebook pages.

The same principle applies for posts that substitute donations for prayers. It’s called Like-Farming, the method of tricking, exploiting or manipulating users to increase likes to a Facebook page.

Facebook Cloning

We still get plenty of reports from readers that Facebook cloning is still being used extensively by scammers who set up Facebook accounts with the same name and profile picture of someone else.

Upon a cursory glance, the cloned profile looks the same as the account they copied, which is often enough. The cloned account sends out friend requests to the friends of the account they copied, with the hope that at least a few of them will not bother to question why they’re getting a second friend request from an account they were already friends with.

Upon establishing a Facebook friendship, the scammer can execute any number of scams upon the friend, including any or all of the above!