Imagine one day you receive a friend request on Facebook from an old buddy you lost touch with over the years. Since you recognize the person by the face you would acknowledge the request and accept it. A few moments later they message you on Facebook Messenger exchanging pleasantries with the usual “Hi” and “How are you?”. Everything is going fine and you feel you’re catching up when suddenly the person drops the bomb. They tell you that they are in an emergency and urgently need money. What would you do?
Taking advantage of Covid-19 pandemic in which people faced financial crisis and depended on social media to stay connected with their dear ones, the cyber criminals and fraudsters came up with new ways of trapping them.
What is the scam all about?
It all starts with a Facebook friend request. Ideally, that friend request will be from someone in your existing friend list who you haven’t spoken to or rarely interact with. The fraudsters copy the profile pictures from your friends or family member’s account and use the same to reach you.
Since you know the person by face it doesn’t seem suspicious at first. Shortly after that, the fraudster posing as your friend messages you telling you that they are in an emergency and want some money immediately with a promise to return the money the day after.
They ask you whether you are using any digital wallet like Paytm or PhonePe or Google-Pay and then share the number you have to make the transfer to. They will repeatedly plead to cite an emergency and would try to convince you to transfer the money. Turns out, they have succeeded at times. During this pandemic, they even share few photos showing some patient being hospitalized & being in critical condition.
How to know it’s a scam?
You have to be a bit more vigilant when it comes to spotting scams like these. The first thing you should do whenever you receive such requests on Facebook is to check the identity of the person by going to their Facebook profile. You also have the option to visit the person’s profile on Facebook Messenger.
So how to spot of the account is fake or genuine? It’s simple:
- Check the number of mutual friends/friends. Fake accounts usually have a lesser number.
- Search for the same profile name on Facebook to confirm whether it’s a duplicate or not.
- You should also go through the profile information of that account.
What to Do Next?
Make sure you inform the person whose identity is being compromised and used for fraud. This will also help them spread the message and inform people on their friend list to not entertain such requests. You can also report the profile as fake by going to the profile and selecting the ‘Find support or report profile’ option.
You can also make sure that your profile picture is not misused by locking it by going to your Facebook profile and clicking on your profile picture to view it. Then, click on the options to the bottom left and click on ‘Turn on Profile Picture Guard’ from the popup. This will put a badge on your profile picture which others cannot copy. You can also lock your profile photos and albums from people not on your friend list by toggling the option in Facebook’s Privacy Settings.
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