Social media might have its virtues, but online safety is not one of them.
More than one in four people who reported losing money to fraud in 2021 said the con originated on social media, according to figures released recently by the Federal Trade Commission.
In sheer numbers, that’s more than 950,000 people who reported a total of about $770 million in losses due to social media ads, posts or messages.
There are lots of reasons for this: Social media is a cheap way to instantaneously reach billions of people, and it’s easy to create a fake persona by hacking into someone’s profile to turn “friends” into victims.
“In fact, scammers could easily use the tools available to advertisers on social media platforms to systematically target people with bogus ads based on such personal details as their age, interests or past purchases,” the FTC says.
While reports about social media cons increased for every age group last year, people 18 to 39 were more than twice as likely as older adults to lose money to these scams in 2021, the FTC says.
Be especially careful when it comes to investment or romance overtures. Those were the two categories in which victims lost the most money, while the most common type of fraud involved online shopping.
The FTC recommends taking the following steps:
• Limit who can see your posts and information on Facebook and other platforms. Although these outlets are known for collecting information about you from your…
