Spammers and how they are affecting social media
Spammers are a growing problem on Facebook in particular and they are having a significant impact on the user experience. Here are some ways in which spammers are affecting social media:
- Spam posts: Spammers often flood social media platforms with posts containing irrelevant, misleading, or harmful content. This can make it difficult for users to find genuine content and can lead to a decrease in user engagement.
- Fake accounts: Spammers create fake accounts to promote their content and to gain access to users' personal information. This can lead to privacy breaches and can make users feel unsafe on social media.
- Bot activity: Spammers use bots to automate their activities on social media platforms, such as liking and commenting on posts. This can artificially inflate engagement metrics and can make it difficult for users to distinguish between genuine and fake interactions.
Social media platforms are taking steps to combat spam, such as using algorithms to detect and remove spam content and implementing measures to verify user identities. However, spammers are constantly evolving their tactics, and it remains to be seen how effective these measures will be in the long term.
In the last year, we have noticed a marked increase in the number of spam comments and scammers, attempting to connect and potentially con unsuspecting people on Facebook. A popular type of fake account is the “US Military” person, with names like John Bradley or Stephen Townsend, they post on guest reviews and page posts in an attempt to “phish” or connect with page followers, with seemingly harmless comments like:
John Bradley: "Hello how are you doing today? I hope everything is okay and you're safe out there. I always enjoy what you share here on Facebook but we're not friends yet, I have tried several times to send you a friend request but it's not going through. I'll be so glad If you can just click into my profile and send me a friend request, but If you find this message embarrassing please pardon my manners, thanks.”
Stephen Townsend: “I'm very impressed with your profile and personality. I also admire your good sense of humor here. I don't normally write in the comment section, but I think you deserve these compliments I tried sending you a friend request but it didn't seem to go through, Kindly click on my profile here in the comment section and send me a request, if you don't mind. Thank you.”
While we laugh and shake our heads, we then report their post, report their profile, ban them and hide their post, the reality is that it takes time to manage each and every spam comment, so they are not only potentially fooling page followers, but they are also costing productivity.
Recently, and this is alarming, we ran a couple of photo competitions at the request of our clients. Unfortunately, a scammer created fake accounts with the exact same name and profile picture as the clients, then posted multiple comments on the competition posts with website links, instructing people to visit their website and enter their credit card. One of the scammers set up a fake website and sadly, one follower commented that they had tried to enter their credit card details but it was not working! As soon as we were alerted to this, we took action by reporting the profile, hiding/blocking the comments, reporting the fake website and advising followers of the scam and warning them not to click on any links.
So as you can see, spammers and scammers pose a threat to more vulnerable social media users and cost time and productivity. We can only hope that security can be improved to reduce the alarming increase in these attacks. And on that note, learn about two-factor authentication and why you need it here.
Don’t hesitate to reach out and contact us, if the headache of dealing with spammers on social media is something we can take off your hands.