Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of scams on Facebook, such as the ‘win a car’ scams and the ‘win a PS4’ scams. They’re usually pretty easy to spot and they target casual Facebook users – people who wouldn’t necessarily know a genuine page from a fake one. However, a new type of scam emerged recently that was a lot more difficult to spot, and it targeted business owners who run Facebook pages.
This new scam warns that your Facebook page has been found to be in violation of Facebook’s rules and will be unpublished. This will scare a lot of page owners into action, and will catch out a lot of people.
The scam originated from a Facebook Page called Team Advert, and it pretends to be Facebook itself. Page owners receive a notification that one of their images has been shared by Team Advert, with the following text:
“Warning !
Your page will be unpublished.
Our system has received the following reports.
√ false name
√ fraud on your account.
√ you write content (coarse).
√ using other people’s images and obscene images.
To prevent fraud, please re-confirm your Account to avoid blocking here:☞
We reserve to close your account if you are found guilty or not verified within the time period that we specify.
And your account will be permanently disabled.”
As this shows up in your notifications, and has the Facebook logo, it’s easy to believe that, on first glance, that it’s a Facebook warning about the subject matter on your page. Unlike most other scams, this one doesn’t use broken English or poor grammar. It’s well written, and is easy to believe it’s real.
The actual page even contains a warning about fake websites made to look like Facebook that are set up to steal usernames and passwords. You couldn’t make this up.
If you look at the page, you’ll see lots of shares of other business pages, giving them the same warning. We’ve commented on a number of shares with the following message:
“It’s a scam page, not affiliate with Facebook. Report it and ignore it.”
Obviously, we can’t comment on all of them, and many people will fall for the scam.
What does the scam do?
If you click on the link, you’re taken to a credible looking login page that asks for your Facebook email and password.
Naturally, this is a phishing page, and any email/password combination will take you to the next screen, where they ask for your credit or debit card to ‘confirm’ your Facebook details.
If you enter details in here, as we did (obviously not real ones), the page then redirects you to Facebook’s own security page, making it seem even more credible. However, rather than confirm your account, you have instead given the scammers your Facebook login and credit card details.
We reported the page to Facebook. However, Facebook always takes days to deal with scams like this – even when the scam page is using their own logo and pretending to be them. Therefore, we also found the hosting company that owns the web server being used for the scam, Hostinger.com, and reported the scam to them. They actually responded in just under 90 minutes, confirming the hosting account for the scammers had been terminated.
“Hello Darren,
Listed abusive account has been terminated. Thank You for reporting this.
Regards,
Edwin B.Hostinger Abuse Department
https://www.hostinger.com”
That’s what I call a swift resolution, but no doubt the scammers will set up another fake site somewhere else, and will start posting out new links to unsuspecting Facebook page owners shortly. If you see the scam, report it to Facebook. Don’t click on any links and don’t enter your login details or credit card details.
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[…] recently wrote about a fake Facebook page named ‘Team Advert’* that was sharing posts by other Facebook pages […]