1: The offers for air duct cleaning and car detailing generally are not real. Beware of generic service offers or pricing that seems too good to be true. It is. They are likely scamming you for your payment, or other info. Same goes for the houses for rent at a low price...if they are being shared, the author is harvesting application fees...similarly, if the house is not rented YET, and has over 400 views and replies...why hasn't it been rented yet? Red flag, they are scamming applicants.
2: If the post says that "It REALLY works" or"It couldn't hurt to try..." or "just hold down the button and press copy, then paste into a new status", or "...a lawyer said it is true" or "...they said it on the news", or any suggestion of what to do to make your news feed refresh and see more content from lost friends, IT IS NOT REAL...IT IS FALSE. They will then urge you to share it.
3: If the post urges you to share, that is the first red flag that it may be false information. Read any post that urges you to share very carefully, and vet the author and content before you randomly share it. Learn to use GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH to reverse search images on the internet to see where else they have appeared.
4: FRIEND REQUESTS: If you get a friend request from someone who is already your friend, check with them...simply go to their profile and see if they are active, if so, then contact them to see if they created a new profile. If they did not, simply report the profile pretending to be them. If the fake profile messages you either from the fake profile or a fake Instagram account, and it feels weird or unfamiliar, DO NOT REPLY. Also, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ADD FRIENDS IF YOU DO NOT KNOW THEM...yes, strangers will attempt to friend you, you can say no and should. Why would you want a stranger as a friend...AND you have given them access to your friends only content, so now they can spoof you. Vet your friends and just add people you know or actually want to interact with.
5: If someone is pretending to be you with a fake profile, YOU HAVE NOT BEEN HACKED...you are being spoofed. Spoofing is when someone makes a profile to look like yours, then tries to add your friends, and once the fake profile has a network of your friends, they reach out to them...either to scam them, or to get them to click malware or share private info. That is the gimmick.
6: TO AVOID BEING SPOOFED...go to your privacy settings and set your privacy so that your FRIENDS LIST is only available to you and your friends, NOT PUBLIC. Spoofers target profiles with public friend lists so that they can contact them from the fake account. If the fake account cannot SEE your friends, you are a bad target.
7: If you have access to your FB account, you have not necessarily been HACKED. Hacking is when an outsider has access to your profile, then they usually change your password and lock you out. If you have access to your account but THINK you may have been "hacked", change your password, and run a virus/malware scanner on your device for safety.
8: BEFORE YOU SHARE THAT HEARTBREAKING POST about the injured dog or lost child, take a second, count to 5, and do a little vetting. Many to most of these posts are scams/fake/fraudulent. They often use the same photos in multiple groups...sharing them to community groups, swip swaps, local classified groups...usually at Facebook groups with a decent number of members (and likely, weak moderation teams). THE SCAM IS...they get thousands of people sharing these posts, THEN THEY CHANGE THE CONTENT. Lately they change it to homes for rent at scary low rates. Your friends think it is real because you shared it and they trust you, so they contact the person who scams them out of their info, or cash for applications, or has them click on malware. RED FLAGS FOR THESE POSTS: they usually hash tag the area they are posting in, they usually turn off commenting so no one can tell anyone it is a scam, and so that when the content changes, people don't wonder why a discussion of a bleeding dog or lost child is under a pic of a house for rent for $800 a month.
9: If you are not happy with your news feed or are missing content from friends, you can adjust it. You can ask to see more from certain friends, you can ask to see less...and Facebook works off an algorithm of your interaction, so the more you interact, the more they will guess what you want or like. SO click LIKE on posts you like, or drop a comment to a friend, or a birthday wish, and you will likely start seeing more content from that person. Explore your NEWS FEED settings to see how to customize the content you are seeing. If this is an issue for you, it is worth looking into how to do.
10: You don't have to de-friend people whose posts piss you off, just choose to no longer see their posts in your feed. You remain friends with them, but you don't see their content in your feed any longer, but you can still visit their page or message them as usual. So, if the politics gets too brutal, or the language too blue for you, etc..., just UNFOLLOW them and you won't be subjected to their posts in your feed.
EDIT: I had to edit the privacy of this post on Facebook to friends only unfortunately, because as soon as I posted it the scammers started flooding the comments... If you would like to share this you'll have to cut and paste it, and I would RECOMMEND making it FRIENDS ONLY so the scammers dont spam your page as well. They seem to have an algorithm that reads certain words and puts up comments with malicious links to recovery options. Beware, and if you repost this, beware of the comments from scammers.
(THIS was a repost of a post I shared at Facebook originally. I am publishing it here at my blog as well).
