Thanks for this, and it is extremely timely. I had a call from my employer yesterday asking for the FB password, and was trying to log onto a Facebook call with someone who wanted to do an interview. I read this and called him this morning - they had offered $2000 for the interview and done enough research to know who he would be interested in being interviewed by.
The zoom caller asked him to have an administrator at today's call, so clearly they hit our two-factor authentication and wanted past it as well.
Talk about reading your story in the nick of time! Thanks, Dina!
I recently published a photo book that has sold pretty well. A few months later I got an email supposedly from a major well known Movie/TV production company asking me to sell them the rights for a streaming series. It included a Zoom schedule of open times to meet with the producer. Google searched the company (many big TV and movie projects) and his name all came back as a real person/company.
I kept on scheduling times and nobody ever showed up at the meeting. Email address was just a little different that the listed company domain. No emails were ever returned.
Finally gave up and found that the entire thing was bogus. They never asked me for any money, so I have no clue what their end-game was, other than piss folks off and raise their expectations.
However, based on the concept I got from the scammer, I am now negotiating with a few real folks to turn the book into a streaming series.
It’s hard to admit you almost got scammed. Thank you for writing about it. I’m sure many people who don’t understand “permissions” can lose control of their sites. And then? Maybe have to pay to get it back? Love your blog posts!
People suck. Thanks for the heads up Dina and glad you were able to pump the brakes before getting fully scammed. I have recently heard about another more insidious Meta account takeover scam that happened to someone I know a couple weeks ago.
The scammer is somehow able to link their Instagram account to a target's personal Meta page, typically where the person has a business page and a FB ad spend. The scammer does something shady to get their Instagram account suspended, which also now suspends the linked Facebook account of the target.
The target at this point has not done anything. They get an alert from Meta saying their Facebook account was suspended and the only way to get it unsuspended is to login to the scammer's linked Instagram account to request a review of the suspension.
Obviously the target does not have access to that and has no simple way to get through to a human at Meta support to appeal the suspension. Meanwhile, if the target owns a business page which also gets suspended, the attacker is somehow able to still run up charges with the credit card linked to their ad spend.
Meta is complicit on two fronts. That they allow a random person to link to an account they don't own, and that their support processes are so convulted it is nearly impossible for most people to get their account back.
Ever.
Decade+ of memories, family , photos etc all locked up and inaccessible.
Do you have two-factor authentication set up? You should (use the app in your phone to change passwords and get the two-factor code; FB doesn't use any of the other authenticator apps.) Do you have a credit card attached to your FB/Meta account? Don't. It's a tool, but you have to stay on top of the sneaky things they try to set as default, etc.
Yikes. It can happen to anyone, it seems (failing to note a red flag soon enough). So happy to read you grew wise to the scam early on and didn’t fall prey to it. Thanks for shining some sunlight on your experience to remind the rest of us how easy it can be to be a target of nefarious activity.
Thanks for this, and it is extremely timely. I had a call from my employer yesterday asking for the FB password, and was trying to log onto a Facebook call with someone who wanted to do an interview. I read this and called him this morning - they had offered $2000 for the interview and done enough research to know who he would be interested in being interviewed by.
The zoom caller asked him to have an administrator at today's call, so clearly they hit our two-factor authentication and wanted past it as well.
Talk about reading your story in the nick of time! Thanks, Dina!
Oh wow, it is really going around.
I recently published a photo book that has sold pretty well. A few months later I got an email supposedly from a major well known Movie/TV production company asking me to sell them the rights for a streaming series. It included a Zoom schedule of open times to meet with the producer. Google searched the company (many big TV and movie projects) and his name all came back as a real person/company.
I kept on scheduling times and nobody ever showed up at the meeting. Email address was just a little different that the listed company domain. No emails were ever returned.
Finally gave up and found that the entire thing was bogus. They never asked me for any money, so I have no clue what their end-game was, other than piss folks off and raise their expectations.
However, based on the concept I got from the scammer, I am now negotiating with a few real folks to turn the book into a streaming series.
It’s hard to admit you almost got scammed. Thank you for writing about it. I’m sure many people who don’t understand “permissions” can lose control of their sites. And then? Maybe have to pay to get it back? Love your blog posts!
People suck. Thanks for the heads up Dina and glad you were able to pump the brakes before getting fully scammed. I have recently heard about another more insidious Meta account takeover scam that happened to someone I know a couple weeks ago.
The scammer is somehow able to link their Instagram account to a target's personal Meta page, typically where the person has a business page and a FB ad spend. The scammer does something shady to get their Instagram account suspended, which also now suspends the linked Facebook account of the target.
The target at this point has not done anything. They get an alert from Meta saying their Facebook account was suspended and the only way to get it unsuspended is to login to the scammer's linked Instagram account to request a review of the suspension.
Obviously the target does not have access to that and has no simple way to get through to a human at Meta support to appeal the suspension. Meanwhile, if the target owns a business page which also gets suspended, the attacker is somehow able to still run up charges with the credit card linked to their ad spend.
Meta is complicit on two fronts. That they allow a random person to link to an account they don't own, and that their support processes are so convulted it is nearly impossible for most people to get their account back.
Ever.
Decade+ of memories, family , photos etc all locked up and inaccessible.
More info on that one here : https://siliconangle.com/2023/05/28/facebook-users-lose-accounts-due-unknown-linked-spam-instagram-accounts/
Note that article was written over a year ago and this issue still continues to affect FB users with little recourse to get it resolved.
It is indeed time to deactivate my Meta page.
Do you have two-factor authentication set up? You should (use the app in your phone to change passwords and get the two-factor code; FB doesn't use any of the other authenticator apps.) Do you have a credit card attached to your FB/Meta account? Don't. It's a tool, but you have to stay on top of the sneaky things they try to set as default, etc.
Yikes. It can happen to anyone, it seems (failing to note a red flag soon enough). So happy to read you grew wise to the scam early on and didn’t fall prey to it. Thanks for shining some sunlight on your experience to remind the rest of us how easy it can be to be a target of nefarious activity.
Jeez. I hate that this stuff exists. Thanks for sharing your experience with us, Dina!
It really can happen to anyone, glad you caught it!
Thanks for sharing! I am glad you didn’t fall for it in the end. So crazy what kind of tricks they have up their sleeves.
Thank you for sharing this story. It's getting scary out there on the Internet.
Dina,
Thanks for sharing and exposing this scam...
Thank you for sharing this, Dina. Totally enjoy your posts!
😵💫