Buyer Beware – Facebook Scam & Spam Alert: Advertisements
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Let this be a warning to all consumers on Facebook, especially those being targeted in the US.
(The AEGIS Alliance) – Facebook has been under a lot of scrutiny in recent times, whether about Cambridge Analytica, security breaches and flaws, or the independent media purge as a few of several recent examples. Facebook has also done hardly anything to combat actual “Fake News” on their platform, but has seemingly done the opposite with some of the independent media purges. However, some have now began to notice spam and scam like advertisements on Facebook, while others are unaware of what’s happening on the social media platform. I’ve done a bit of research into these spam and scam posts, and it didn’t take long to go through my feed and point some of them out.
I was first motivated to write this when I came across an ad on Facebook claiming to be giving away free gaming consoles, video games, and accessories for only the cost of shipping. The page only had around 240 likes, and may have since been taken down after I reported the promoted post. Their website is freegamesystems.com and was only created about one week ago. Anything you put in your cart only costs $15 shipping, but they have more nefarious motives. This website will not only never send what you ordered, but also steals the personal information you put in, such as your billing address, phone number, and email, along with your credit card information. They will steal your credit card info and billing address to commit fraud and rob you.
Next is Humble Household. Although they have 11,025 Facebook page likes, there is no information about their company on both their Facebook page, or their website. Looking at their shipping policy on their website, it takes one to three days to process the order, then another 15 to 20 days for your order to be delivered. This is because the fake company is actually located in China, but their Facebook page profile image and cover photo misleads people into believing they are an American company. I looked into them, and on www.reviews.io, they have a 1.47 out of 5 stars rating from 57 reviews. Customer complaints include receiving products “in a million pieces”, shipping time complaints, people saying products ship from China and take a month or longer to get, never getting their product, or cheap products that break very easily and aren’t as advertised.
Other offenders include B G with only 506 likes, Gift Deals with only 1,051 likes, and Breezylive with only 3,225 likes. There’s also BurnOut with only 184 likes. These pages tell you nothing about their business in the page’s about info.
Somehow these page’s with a bad reputation or no reputation at all, and with hardly any Facebook likes or no information about their business are allowed to advertise on Facebook and try to sell you cheaply made products that ship from China, even attempting to scam you or commit fraud by stealing your banking information. They target the US but are located and ship from China, taking up to a month to receive your cheaply made product in the mail, and there’s no guarantee your product will arrive in one piece or be as advertised. This is a warning for buyers to beware of the Facebook page’s that are trying to sell you products with promoted posts.
If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Looks like it’s time for Facebook to be more strict when it comes to promoted posts on their platform.
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
