How to Protect Yourself From Social Media Scammers?

As various studies show, residents of Armenia spend more and more money on social networks for entertainment, communication, charity, shopping, gifts, and other paid services. At the same time, the likelihood of running into scammers increases, for whom today social networks provide a very large field of activity. The personal information of users posted in them is quite enough for experienced fraudsters to apply a variety of schemes against selected victims in order to gain access to their accounts and even to bank accounts. 

Most often, fraudsters use the following scheme to defraud unsuspecting network users:

Begging

Almost every social media user has encountered this type of fraud. The scheme is simple, scammers post photos of sick children who need an urgent expensive operation, homeless animals who need money for maintenance, etc. Under the photo is the account number to which you need to transfer funds. The focus here is on compassion.

Account Hacks

The essence of this method is that a message comes from your friend on the social network with a request to transfer funds to the account specified by him. He explains this in a difficult situation that arose suddenly. Naturally, you are assured that all the funds will be returned by transfer to the card, that he will explain everything to you, but he asks not to call the phone. As soon as you help your "friend" by transferring funds to his account, he immediately disappears, and after a while, he will receive a message that his account on the social network has been hacked. As a result, your money went "nowhere", and you became another person who filled the pocket of a sophisticated swindler. 

Electronic Wallets

Most often, to steal your passwords and secret information, scammers use "spam mailings" to your e-mail address, where it is reported that your wallet is blocked and that you need to follow the specified link and enter your personal data. As soon as you follow the instructions, fraudsters can easily use your e-wallet for their own purposes.

Security Check

In this case, you receive a message from the bank to your e-mail address stating that they are trying to write off funds from your account in a fraudulent way. To protect the card and cancel the operation of debiting funds, you are instructed to immediately send a confirmation code to the specified phone number, which will come after a while. You, succumbing to excitement and panic, act clearly according to their instructions, most likely, without reading the text of the message (which indicates that this code confirms the withdrawal of funds from your account), send the confirmation code to the specified phone number. By sending the specified code, as it turns out later, you personally pay for purchases, services and transfer funds to the accounts of other persons.

Buying Things

There are various shops on the Internet that sell fashionable clothes, accessories, sports equipment and much more. Typically, during large discounts, fraudsters can register fly-by-night firms and send notifications about favorable discounts on various products. Sometimes such an unscrupulous seller asks for an advance payment for his goods to a bank account, and even in the amount of one hundred percent of its value. As soon as you have paid for the purchase, the seller immediately disappears with your money. 

Seven Ways to Defend

Against Fraudsters Wondering. how to resist these and many other types of online fraud, Novosti-Armenia has identified seven most effective ways to protect against fraudsters

Of course, the most reliable protection is the complete and unconditional refusal of any stay on the social network. However, today it is absolutely irrelevant because social networks have long ceased to be ordinary fun for schoolchildren and students. They have become a fully functional and convenient tool for business correspondence, all kinds of advertising campaigns, promotions, and other activities inherent in adults and business people. Therefore, for a safe and comfortable communication on social networks, try to adhere to seven simple rules. 

1. Pay attention to the links that your friends and especially strangers drop you. Suspicions should be caused by those links that consist of addresses of services to shorten links: goo.gl, bit.ly, and others. But nevertheless, even if the link seems to lead to a page within the social network itself, in which the communication takes place, you need to take a closer look at it: it may turn out that instead of the odnoklassniki.ru address, something like odnok1assniki.ru will be written there, and by clicking on it, you will infect your computer with a keylogger or trojan.

2. Do not use any third-party applications that supposedly help you get access to the "closed" features of the social network, increase your rating in it, etc. The same can be said for any third party sites. For example, applications are widespread that seem to be able to show you the "guests" of your account on the social network "Vkontakte", in which in fact there is no such function. You should also be suspicious of programs for downloading various music and videos from social networks, as they may contain means of stealing your username and password. 

3. In the event that you receive a message allegedly on behalf of the administration of a social network with a request or requirement to follow the attached link, you should carefully check the link in the manner described above. There is a danger that it can lead to a phishing site, the design of which will not differ from the appearance of the abandoned social network, but when you try to enter your login and password on it, you will permanently lose the right to access your page. By the way, the very fact that you are required to enter your login and password when they are already recorded by the browser or the site itself is already a reason to be on your guard and close the tab with a suspicious site.

4. If there is a need to use social networks from a smartphone or tablet, use only the official applications of the networks with which you work. If there are none, visit the social networking site through a regular mobile device browser. Of course, apps that make it to Google Play, the AppStore, or the Windows Phone Marketplace are scrutinized by platform manufacturers, but there is still a certain chance that an unofficial app will be malicious.

5. Does not use standard methods of recovering a forgotten password and, if possible, link your page to your mobile phone number. Very often, fraudsters gain access to the victim's account using a password reminder service. If the site allows, then the best solution is to come up with a "secret question" yourself, or even better to link the page to a "mobile phone".

6. Watch what you write about yourself on social networks. Unfortunately, you talk so much about yourself without even suspecting that someone might use it against you. It is difficult to know in advance what exactly is useful to a fraudster. But at least know that a social network is not a place to post passport scans and other important documents.

7. Install various applications carefully within the social network itself. Many social networks have support for third-party applications that you can install on your page. These add-ons can access your personal data and, as a result, steal passwords and logins, so you should not install all of them. As a rule, if the program is popular and well-known enough, then it will not contain any hacker functions. If the application offers to get a "VIP-status" or the ability to access some "secret" features that the network itself allegedly hides from its users, then in no case should it be installed and used. Do install professional antivirus like total security to protect your device from external danger hazards.