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  Geebo 9:00 am on November 15, 2022 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: missing child, Scams ( 1,225 ), social media ( 73 ), Wyoming   

  Missing teen scam hijacks social media 

  

  By Greg Collier

  Nothing gets shared on social media faster than the report of a missing child. Posts like that elicit such a visceral reaction in us that we’ll share the post without verifying it. This is precisely what scammers are hoping for when they post phony reports of missing children on social media. As we tend to point out, scammers will use any type of tragedy, real or imagined, to fleece their victims.

  In Wyoming, it’s been reported that scammers are posting the picture of a teenage boy who allegedly went missing after not returning home from school. The name of the boy changes, but the pictures largely stay the same. These posts are being posted by several different people, with some of them claiming to be the boy’s mother. The scammers are said to have been making these posts in community and neighborhood groups, and pages dedicated to other missing children.

  So, you’re probably wondering what the scammers can possibly gain by creating a fictitious missing child. The missing child post is just an avenue to get the post shared as widely as possible. Once the original post is shared enough times, the scammers will change the post to whatever their latest scam is. In the Wyoming case, the posts were changed to posts for a banking scam.

  So, of course, we always want to help when a child has been reported missing, and we still can. But before you share that post, you might want to make sure it’s from a credible source. For example, if the post comes from a local news station, a police station, or an established organization like The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), it’s probably a legitimate post.

  You may also want to check the age of the post. If you share a post that is years old and the child has been found, repeated posts could make things more difficult not only for police but the child’s family as well.

  Lastly, you could be sharing a false post that is designed to hurt someone.

   

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  Geebo 8:00 am on August 16, 2022 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: buy sell and trade, hoax ( 3 ), missing child, missing person ( 6 ), Scams ( 1,225 ), social media ( 73 )   

  Scammers target ‘Buy, Sell, Trade’ groups with missing child posts 

  

  By Greg Collier

  We’ve all done it. We’ve all shared a post on social media that appealed to our emotions that turned out not to be true. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. We all thought we were helping someone by sharing the post. Whether or not the information in the post was outdated or a hoax to begin with, misleading posts get shared with the best intents in mind. Scammers, who are modern amateur masters of psychology, are using posts with emotional appeal to further their scams, and they’re using local community pages to do so.

  According to several police departments around the country, scammers are targeting local swap pages on social media. Specifically, scammers are targeting pages that are what’s known as ‘buy, sell, and trade’ groups. Scammers have been joining these groups and have made posts that are designed to grab your immediate attention. Most of these posts have been about a missing child or baby. Well-meaning members of these groups have ended up sharing these posts, which can lead to the posts being shared thousands of times.

  When these posts reach critical mass, the scammers change the posts to peddle their latest scam. Instead of a missing child post, the post can then become about any number of scams designed to steal people’s money.

  If you’re going to share a post on social media that demands community attention, please make sure it comes from legitimate sources like police departments or legitimate news sources. If you share an unverified post on social media, you’re potentially opening up your entire friends’ list to potential scammers. And even if you’re sharing a post from a legitimate source, try to verify that the information is current, as years old posts often find new life when someone mistakenly shares one.