February 28, 2023 post.
STOP SHARING THESE SCAM POSTS!!
It’s very simple when you understand how it works. It starts with the scammer posting a picture and information that most of us would consider to be an emergency in the local community or even a pic of someone to watch out for. Once they get hundreds or thousands of shares on that post in a matter of hours, they remove the original picture / text
and change that post to ANYTHING they want and because it’s the original post you shared (even if it was shared from your friends page) it will also change it on YOUR page to something you never actually shared.
It’s usually changes to something they say they are trying to sell like tickets,real estate, asking for a deposit to participate in getting paid to do online surveys,etc… Only problem is, they don’t have the actual items they are advertising and they are most likely going to ask for a deposit to hold them or somehow get you to send the money through PayPal, Zelle, etc. When you offer to give them cash, they will typically tell you they are not home and not able to meet you in person or something to that effect.
It only takes a minute, the best thing you can do BEFORE sharing these posts is to look into the situation they are referring to and you will most likely realize it’s not legit. These scams are getting so common and are actually pretty clever if you think about it.
They will post pics of kids and say they are autistic and lost, pics of an unconscious person in a hospital bed and ask for it to be shared to help find the family, elderly person that is lost, pics of injured animals (sometimes with a kid in the pic) and typically say the animal has no microchip,no collar and the animal is bleeding or looks like it’s dying but they took it to a local vet. The most common one now seems to be pics of the guy stealing catalytic converters. The list goes on and on. There are a few out there that look somewhat legit. They will most likely tag a local community in it and everyone starts sharing like crazy because of the “emergency”. The scammers are usually outside of the United States and only using pics they found on the internet.
The easiest way to recognize it is…
1. You CAN’T comment on the original post because it only has the SHARE or LIKE button on it.
2. They tag a local community and ask you to share immediately.
3. The original post was started on a community page.
4. It’s always an EMERGENCY situation
5. When you click on the persons name that originally posted it, you will easily see it looks like a fake fb profile and they only have 1-50 “friends”. There is no way to comment on their page or posts.
COPY AND PASTE or SHARE THIS ON YOUR PAGE TO KEEP SOMEONE YOU KNOW FROM FALLING FOR THIS BS!!
Original source can be found here.
