It's not just strangers you have to be worried about on social media these days, it can be your good friends.
With Taylor Swift's worldwide Eras Tour back in the U.S. this fall, scammers are coming out of the woodwork offering fake tickets. One man learned you can't always trust ticket sellers you find online, even if you think they are "friends" you have known for years.
Surprise for stepdaughter goes bad
Jeremy Robinson wanted to surprise his stepdaughter with a pair of tickets to her Indianapolis concert this fall.
"I was looking for tickets for my wife and stepdaughter to Taylor Swift," Robinson said, "and I had a buddy whose page popped up and said they had tickets at face value."
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With resale sites showing tickets for $2,000 and up at Lucas Oil Stadium, it was an offer he couldn't refuse.
"He was asking $400 apiece for the tickets," he said, "face value."
Not wanting to lose the tickets, after a few messages back and forth, he transferred $800 through a money transfer service, to a bank account provided by the seller. Within minutes, his money was gone and so were the tickets he thought he would soon be receiving.
"Then," he said, "everything was blocked and the Facebook page was deleted and the post taken down."
His friend's Facebook post said only "this content is not available."
Not just concert tickets
But this scam goes beyond just concert tickets, with hackers, appearing to be your friend, pretending to sell game consoles, iPads, and more, all at very low prices.
So how does a hacker suddenly show up as a friend on Facebook?
Chris Drake with the company iconectiv says anyone's credentials can be exposed while using public wifi, for example.
"A sophisticated scammer can connect to you and steal your cookies," Drake said. "Now they have the cookie storage of your username and passwords to a lot of things including Facebook."
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In some cases, your friend responded to a phishing email purporting to be from Facebook and inadvertently sent the scammer his Facebook login information.
Red flags of a hacked account include:
- Spelling errors in the post
- Hearing from someone unexpectedly, who you hadn't conversed with in a long time
- Strange posts on a friend's wall
- A sender asking you to move the conversation from Facebook to another platform
Facebook encourages all users to report fake or hacked accounts in the Facebook Help Center.
A simple solution, however, is to call your friend, or Facetime them, to verify their Facebook post was real.
When Jeremy Robinson finally reached his friend, he learned his friend's page had been hacked. He says several other people fell for the ploy, too.
"We weren't the first people that got scammed by fake Taylor Swift tickets," he said.
So if a friend offers you concert tickets or electronics, be sure to verify who you are buying from, so you don't waste your money.
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