BBB Scam Alert: Scammers are Targeting your Facebook Page

It can all happen so innocently. You're scrolling through your Facebook posts and see a post about an injured pet or lost child. Thinking you're being helpful, you share the post on your own profile. But a scammer is watching your every move.

Immediately after you've shared the post, however, a scammer changes the original post to a deceptive ad for affordable apartments or maybe to a link directing the user to a survey that "guarantees" a prize for participating. Your friends now think that you are recommending this new content. The trick is called bait-and-switch and the scammer's goal is to either get someone's money via a deposit on a rental property before the user gets to have an actual look at it, or someone's personal information which could lead to identity theft. There are many variations of the scheme but the common thread is the emotionally moving content or the sense of urgency displayed in the post which gets viewers to quickly share them with friends without checking either the source or verifying the post is legitimate.

Such a scam went viral on Facebook this past fall with a fake post about a lost dog that was hit by a car and rescuers were posting to find her family. Scammers target Facebook groups as there is already a sense of community and the fake posts are likely to be shared with a wide audience of potential victims. The post about the dog began popping up in Facebook groups all over the world and all used the same images and video but merely changed the location where the accident supposedly happened.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) offers several tips to avoid being scammed by a bait-and-switch Facebook ad. First, examine the post carefully before sharing it on your profile. Look closely at the profile of the person who created and shared the original post. If the original post came from California but the post popped up in a group located in the Midwest, it may be a red flag of a bait-and-switch post.

Find out when the poster created the Facebook profile. Scammers always create new profiles when their old one gets banned. Click on their profile to find out how long they've been a member of the group. You can also do a search of their public profile and even type their name in a search engine to find out if you've got the right person.

Remember that if a child is indeed missing or an accident has occurred, it will likely be in the news or shared by law enforcement on their Facebook page. Check there and also look at local news websites.

If you're tech-savvy, you can do a reverse image search on Google. This will allow you to find out if the picture or video you saw were used on other ads or websites in different cities. You can also find similar posts by copying and pasting text from the post into Facebook's search tool to see if other posts with the same text and different pictures show up. If you suspect the post is a scam, report it to Facebook.

Find out more at http://www.bbb.org and go to Facebook scams