Just “Like” the Real Thing: The New Crop of Convincing Facebook Fakes

In 2018, the good things in life—friendship, romance, altruism—and the bad—lying, bullying, crime—all unfold in expedited, magnified fashion on social media. Earlier this year, researchers uncovered a scam to bilk you out of cyber currency on Twitter. Now, in similar fashion, we’re alerting you to the dangers of a recent crop of Facebook fakes profiles.

Social media moles

Scams are as old as humanity itself. In the 14 years of Facebook’s existence, they’ve surfaced time and time again on the popular social media network. Catfish, a documentary about a duplicitous Facebook relationship, was released eight years ago, and new episodes of the hit MTV show it inspired air to this day. In 2018, most people are very familiar with the possibility of fake Facebook users, their motives, and modus operandi. That’s why the current crop of Facebook con artists have stepped up their game.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal details how Facebook fakes pose as allies to influence and gain intelligence on grassroots political movements. Social media swindlers aren’t only targeting political organizations, but businesses as well. In corporate scamming, a catfish poses as an employee of your company (LinkedIn and “Our Team” pages make this information readily available), creates a Facebook group, and invites legitimate employees to join and dish company data. With cyber predators like these on the prowl, Facebook was forced to delete 583 million fake accounts in the first quarter of 2018 alone.

Account accountability

If yours is one of the 40 million corporations wisely using Facebook to advertise and interact with your customer base, you don’t have to wait for Facebook’s team of analysts to identify and delete fraudulent accounts. There are proactive moves you can make to protect your business.

For starters, you can and should enable secure two-factor authentication for page managers looking to post content from their mobile device. To ensure secure desktop access to Facebook, make sure that your network’s firewall is high functioning.

Facebook presents business owners with unprecedented opportunities—as well as unsettling risks. Contact eMazzanti for assistance navigating them all.