To gain your sympathy, they may pretend to be trying to get out of a bad relationship or claim to have recently been divorced or widowed. They then use that as leverage to ask you for money or pay for something like a trip or visa. The first objective of a romance scam is to get you to trust the scammer and develop intimate feelings for them. In some cases, they may also ask for your bank account information or your address. However, you can only claim your winnings if you pay a small fee. They tell you you’re among a group of people who have won a lottery. With a lottery scam, the scammer pretends to either be someone you know or to represent an organization. Here are examples of some of the common variants of this scam. Common Facebook Messenger Scamsįacebook messenger scams often seem real and are very convincing. With other Facebook scams, the scammer doesn’t need to pretend to be a friend or someone you know. Scams involving Facebook Messenger are different from general Facebook scams because the attacker first impersonates someone you know or may admire and then reaches out through its messaging platform. In some instances, the attacker may make a fake account that appears to belong to someone you know. By impersonating someone in your follower's list or contacts, they can use your relationship with that person to steal your money or sensitive information. Use browser protection to avoid phishing links, use strong passwords and never, ever, wire money to someone without confirming it's truly them.Facebook messenger scams are attempts by hackers who gain access to the Facebook account of someone you know or respect. The Facebook and Paypal scams continue to show up, but can be avoided. (See what to do if your information has been breached) This way, you will know to act immediately to protect your information. Use browser protection: With browser protection like Guardio installed, you'll get warned before entering sketchy sites or downloading malicious apps that could steal your information and sell it on the dark web.Īccount Monitoring: Enable account monitoring to know when your information surfaces somewhere it shouldn't. During this time, the hacker can perform a lot of damage in the user's name. When an account gets hacked, it can take a while before the user notices. In this scam, the victims could have saved themselves by doing this. It's not you, it's them: ANY message, on Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, email or text, that requests you to wire money - immediately call the person who sent this to verify it's really them. If a hacker lands both of these together, the risk is much higher.
Passwords: Use separate passwords for your logins, especially when it comes to big sites like Facebook and Paypal.
#FACEBOOK MESSENGER SCAMS HOW TO#
And never accept or move money on behalf of someone else." How to avoid being scammed Always question uninvited approaches in case it's a scam, and check directly with the person concerned to verify the request. "We advise customers to be wary if they receive unusual requests about their PayPal account, especially requests to move large amounts of money, even when the request appears to come from someone they know.
The victim only later sees the transaction was pulled and realizes it was a scam. As soon as they wire the funds, the scammer performs a chargeback on PayPal, meaning the transaction gets reversed, the transferred money gets sent back to the scammer. The victim checks their Paypal account and sees that they got the Paypal transfer, and wires the funds to the scammers' bank account. It’s rated “Excellent” on TrustPilot with 4.5 stars from 1,552 reviews. Over one million people use Guardio to keep themselves safe as they browse the web.