We have all at some point at least learned once not to just click on any email when it says it’s from Yahoo or a password reset to a site. At least we hope you check every link carefully that comes in your email as such. Now that most of our time has turned to Social media so have the hackers and scams from deep within the dark world wide web.

Cyber criminals can get to you easy on social media especially on Facebook. With more than a billion users, Facebook has become an easy way for scammers to rip off as many people as possible at once in a variety of different ways. These hackers and scammers are getting smarter and more innovative posing as the people running contests or freebie sites to find a way for you to reveal your personal information or send them money.

You need to know how to spot some big scams that are making the rounds and how to protect yourself. Here’s a few Facebook and social media scams to watch out for:

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. That same rule of thumb applies to Facebook and every other social media site, email chain etc. Any promise of a outrageous return on a small investment is probably a scam! If someone is messaging you on Facebook or Instagram claiming to be the owner of a contest or freebie site then contact the page you follow and see if that is the actual person. Most likely it’s a fraud. Just recently a friend who owns a freebie site told me about how a friend of theirs was messaged from a person on Instagram using the logo of the site on their page making it believable. They had claimed they were Paula Abdul trying to get that person to send in information and money. They would not give their phone number at first and when they did it was a Google Voice number that could not be traced easily. People actually fall for this and think they can send money to this person online who seems trustable then they never get anything back in return. [Read more…]