IT Desk
With the increasing use of Social media like Facebook among the people, old and young, newer and novel ways of fooling people for financial gains are being invented. There has been quite a hullabaloo recently in Facebook about unknown people opening Fake account using their photos and information and asking money to the friends of the victim.
The modus operandi of this crime is to open an identical Facebook account of a person and then sending Friend Request to the friends of that person. After someone accepts their request, what they do is send private message asking for money and saying they are in trouble or citing some other reasons. They will send their UPI QR Code or phone number and ask the other person to send money as soon as possible. They usually ask for amount less than 10 thousand Rupees not to raise suspicion. There have been reports of people sending money to such request unknowingly or out of ignorance. This is how they work.
People should never entertain such fraudulent request in social media and should always be extra careful when it involves financial transaction, so as not to lose their hard earned money. We are suggesting some steps which everyone can use and follow, to prevent such incidents or falling victim to such type of crime.
First of all, make a full privacy checkup of your account. Facebook has settings for doing this. Limit who sees your Facebook posts like Photos and postings, like changing your privacy settings to Friends only instead of making them public. Scammers can dig plenty of juicy information from such public post. Make sure your new post/photos are only visible to your friends or family members only. Keeping your profile locked is one good option and your information can be accessed only by your friends. This advice applies to Instagram too, that is making your profile private so that strangers cannot view your photos.
Limit who can access your past posts on Facebook. Facebook has a setting for doing this.
And search for fake profiles opened in your name from time to time. If you find fake profile opened in your name using your photos and information, do not send message to that Fake account instead report that account to Facebook or Instagram. You can report such fake account in Facebook here – https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/295309487309948 and for Instagram, https://help.instagram.com/contact/636276399721841
