Jim Rossman: Facebook scammers rely on your good nature
Published in Science & Technology News
I’ve been seeing a lot of potential scam posts on my Facebook feed lately.
I’m sure you’ve seen them.
As I was sitting down to write this column, I opened my Facebook page and the first post was from a small town where my wife’s family lived.
It is a post about a dog that supposedly escaped from a boarding kennel. The poster wants all the members of the group to please share the photos and message them if you have any information.
Then you notice they’ve turned off comments for the post.
All you can do is share it.
You feel bad for the person with the lost dog, and you share the post to your friends, so they can help.
That act of sharing the post is all that’s needed. You’ve spread that post to the feed of a lot of your friends or even entire groups and you think you did a good thing.
So, what’s the scam?
A month from now, the scammer will edit their original post, which will change that post on Facebook pages of all the friends.
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