🤔How do we discourage everyone from not acting safely on social media.
👎Do not accept a friend request from someone you do not know. Anywhere. Does not mean accept some and not others. Have a look and see if you like the look of the person. Say No ! one day but Yes! on another day. It means *NEVER* accept a friend request from someone you do not know !
➡️We have MASSES of information across many platforms and other organisations have it too….. yet, it really is never looked at and learned from at the start of the stranger contact.
🚩We have RED FLAGS.. we do Live Chats… we spend time every day to try to help but what do we hear most? People want this stopped, but that has to be a mutli-peopled effort.
🤍It is understood that being lonely is a huge vulnerability that scammers exploit. Does having someone to text lessen loneliness? Looking up from the phone… you are still alone. Ok, so loneliness. There is a future offered and a ‘happy ever after’. To get to this you have to keep sending money. As much as you will and often all you have. If you don’t send money often the scammer gets nasty, who would want an abusive partner !
💫Celebrity scams…. Pretending to be your favourite celebrity, Actor, Singer, or just TV personality. Now, if your favourite celebrity contacted that is suspicious. Then they want Gift Cards ! That is just not right and people with experience of life know the strange and the odd !
😜People will Google a cough, a bad stomach or long headache. Someone comes to them and says ‘Hey Beautiful, can I get to know you’ and it’s said YES ! and goes to Telegram, Whatsapp or some other Chat App.
No Googling ! Even searching on ‘Man oil rig is it a scam’... will tell you in Google.
🪖Military, even a General, nobody authenticates with actual military.
The scammer asks for a first small favour. They'll find themselves drawn closer. It is called ‘The Benjamin Franklin' effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to like someone more after they do that person a favor.
Nobody really likes to doubt and so when you feel good about doing someone a favour, it breaks down any barriers you may have felt.
Also if you are a good person and would do no wrong, you tend to believe everyone is good and so your defences are down. When you feel happy, the one who is holding your interest makes you happy, your connection is important and nobody wants it proved to them the connection is not real. So the scammer keeps on with the mantra .. ‘Am real babe’ the victim keeps believing in them being real ?
There is a phrase ‘allure lives in a pause’.. by not getting contact for a few days, when they do contact, the relief is great and the connection deepens.
➡️Social media platforms can add warnings before accepting unknown requests: “This account has no mutual connections. Are you sure?”
We have seen this tried. But everyone clicked YES and went on to talk to the stranger!
So how can we get people to practice ‘Safe'
“Strangers online aren’t always who they seem.” People respond to clear, relatable risks and easy-to-follow steps. Unless they have to initiate those steps! Mostly they just walk blindly in.
All platforms could do so much more. Their AI should make it easy for them to flag suspicious accounts based on behavior. Imposters and fraud doesn’t seem high on their list of importance.
💀SO IT IS DOWN TO US TO WARN, YOU TO TAKE CARE AND CHECK AND EVERYONE REPEATING ‘NEVER SEND MONEY FOR ANYTHING CONCERNED WITH SOMEONE YOU JUST KNOW ONLINE, IT WILL ALWAYS BE FRAUD.
We could stop scams tomorrow… WHEN THE MONEY STOPS THE SCAMS STOP.
