Facebook scam tricks page admins into losing control of their page

If you’ve just received a message offering you thousands of dollars a week just for posting some ads from your Facebook page, it could sound like some easy money. But beware. Facebook page administrators should be on the lookout for an online scam that can allow crooks to gain admin access to their pages using promises of money in exchange for doing just this.

This type of online scam is often started via an unsolicited email or a message to the social media page which will ask the admin to post content or adverts from their page in exchange for a payout often ranging in the thousands of dollars a week.

Some examples of these messages are below –

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Hi Admin!
I’m Interested in renting your page i’ll just give you 2 articles in a day that you can post yourself on the page i’ll pay you 1500-3000 USD $ per week and my all payments will be done in advance. Note: We don’t need any kind of access on your page.

Many of these unsolicited requests will go out of their way to mention that they don’t need “any kind of access to the page” and they all attempt to lure the page admin with the prospect of high payouts. Many of these scammers falsely claim to work for legitimate businesses, while some even claim to work for “Facebook Instant Articles”.

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But it’s a trap. The sender of these messages has no intention of paying money to the page admin for posting ads. This is actually a ploy to trick the admin into handing over admin access to their page.

If the page admin expresses interest in the offer, the crook then attempts to lure them into signing up for a Facebook Business account. Facebook’s Business and Ad Manager interfaces are complex and many admins don’t know exactly how they work. And that’s what the crooks are hoping for, since their aim is to trick the page admin into handing over admin access to their page inside Business Manager without realising that is what they’re doing.

And when the victim hands over admin access, the crooks immediately revoke their admins rights, making the crook the sole admin for the page. From there they can use the page to promote scams or sell it onto third parties.

And of course, Facebook being Facebook, it is incredibly difficult for the legitimate administrators to regain access to their stolen pages.

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The best way to avoid these scams is to never accept suspicious and unsolicited claims for business partnerships without first doing your due diligence. Look into the person sending the business request. Are they really working for a legitimate company? Or are they emailing you from Gmail accounts or sending messages from empty social media profiles? And as always, remember, if it appears too good to be true, it probably is.

Tip: As with many scams, watch out for bad spelling and grammar since many of these schemes originate from non-English speaking countries.

To further help our readers spot this scam, we’ve included a brief transcript of our conversation detailing the first half of this scam, when one such scammer contacted our (anti-scam!) page trying to pull off this same con. The crook didn’t appear to pick up our clues that were probably weren’t going to be falling for the scam.

Keep up-to-date with all the latest cybersecurity threats and our tips to stay safe online. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

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