The change I want to see

Social media scam

In its latest Consumer Protection Data Spotlight, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says 2021 was a banner year for social media scammers, with $770 million in social-media–originated fraud losses reported to the agency. The more than 95,000 people who reported losing money to social-media–related fraud represent more than 25% of all fraud loss last year, according to the FTC. The 18-fold rise in social media fraud losses over the past four years alone is a staggering statistic. 

The common scams are catfish, cryptocurrency, cash grabs, clickbait scam, fake competition or giveaways, membership scams, quiz scams, subscription traps.

Since last year, among the victims of network fraud in the province, About 70% have high school education or above, More than 90% of the victims are 20-50 years old. Many fraudsters are not well educated and lack of  legal awareness. For example, most of the people engaged in fraudulent activities such as “stuck abroad scam” and “impersonation of gangsters” are graduate from primary school only; most of those engaged in “pretending to be rich and better looking to make friends” catfishing, “specializing in gold, speculating in stocks” are mostly middle school dropouts young man.

According to Dr. Thomas Plante, psychology professor at Stanford and Santa Clara University, scammers have a few different motivations.

“Basically, the thinking is that ‘I’m important and the rules just don’t apply to me,’ These scammers do and take what they please and find a way to justify it given their superiority, importance, or desire.”

There are many reasons social media scam on the rise. Chaos caused by the global COVID-19 crisis is one of a important fact. A changing e-commerce landscape. The advent of new marketplace platforms. Payments moving online. Increasingly digital banking services. New consumer expectations.  More sophisticated fraud tactics. Unclear legal jurisdiction of cross-border fraud. Technological advancements. 

How to change

Provide minimal information, Utilize two-factor authentication, always remain doubtful, staying vigilant and educated about security risks on social media can help reduce the possibility of data breaches and keep your safe and secure. In long term, keep improving education rate and level. Decrease unemployment rate during/after covid-19. Comprehensively promote anti-fraud knowledge.

Also it is important that related companies should take actions on social media scams, meta(facebook) did not reply email make any response. Nevertheless, from past news ‘facebook and google failing to take action against scams adverts’. Almost half of victims overall said they did not report the scam advert to the platform – 31% of those said they did not report it because they doubted anything would be done.

For the latest updates. UK government published article ‘Major law changes to protect people from scam adverts online’ in 8 March 2022, It will consider the whole supply chain and whether those within it should do more to combat harmful advertising, including ad-funded platforms such as Meta, Snap, Twitter and Tik Tok and intermediaries such as Google, TheTradeDesk and AppNexus. The National Cyber Security Centre launched the Suspicious Email Reporting service in April 2020 to help people report suspicious emails, including those claiming to offer coronavirus services. Since the launch, the NCSC have shut down over 76,000 scams across 139,000 websites.