Greg's Corner

Scam targets teens on social media

By Greg Collier

If you’re a parent with teenagers, your children may be just a little bit more tech-savvy than you. While they may have a wealth of tech experience, teenagers tend to lack real-world experience. Many teenagers often lack the knowledge to know when something is too good to be true. Scammers are aware of this and use their lack of knowledge and experience to lure them into traps. It’s our job as parents to try to protect our kids from these mistakes, but not only can’t we hover over them 24 hours a day, teenagers are very good at hiding things. You may want to have a talk with them about this scam.

A sheriff’s department in Ohio has noticed an uptick in a scam that targets teens on Snapchat. It’s been dubbed the sugar daddy or sugar mamma scam. In this scam, the scammers approach teens and promise them money in exchange for them to send good morning and good night messages. The scammers will then send a large check to the teen while either asking a portion to be sent back or to a third party. If you’re a longtime reader, you probably recognize this as the fake check scam. Once the teen deposits the check and sends money from it elsewhere, they’ll be responsible for the full amount of the check once the bank realizes the check is a fake. Not only could this affect their credit before they even really get started in the world, this could also have damaging psychological effects on teens as well.

The best way to prevent them falling to this scam is to make sure their Snapchat accounts aren’t public accounts where anyone can contact them. Periodically check their friends list on Snapchat to make sure there are no inappropriate contacts on their list. Now, you may think that’s a little invasive and that you trust your kids to make the right decisions. That’s all well and good, but you can’t trust the adults that are approaching them on social media.