We've heard of Zoom bombers, and now we have online event scammers! This online event scam tries to divert your audience to a different event link. Holding online events is a great way to increase exposure to your program and reach a diverse audience, don't be afraid of spammers and scammers. Just be prepared. The value to our communities and the ability to extend information using social media's power still has a huge benefit.
These scam artists create multiple fake Noisily links, duplicate posts, copy, and comment as the program across posts and events. They also try to collect personal info from attendees, including collecting credit card payments for free events.
The statewide office recently hosted a live-streamed event with PlantRight on Jan. 19, 2021, and became a scam target. With a little bit of research, we quickly shut down the spammers and were prepared for blocking and deleting comments during the event. Here are some ways to help prevent this from happening and to protect our audience.
Warning signs to spot in advance:
- Monitor Facebook for duplicate events using your event name
- Decline unknown pages requesting to "Co-Host" your event
- Avoid new profiles that have been recently created
What to do if you encounter the phishing scam:
- Monitor your Facebook activity, comments, and posts. Have volunteers monitor and review all posts and comments to ensure no spam is getting through.
- If you cannot monitor comments and posts, turn off commenting.
- Ban any usernames/fake profiles you find commenting or posting on your page.
- Block specific words and turning on the profanity filter for your event page will aid this process. You can do this in 'General' in your page's settings.
- Any suspicious posts or comments found need to be flagged to Facebook reported and banned
- Report the pages; this will help Facebook keep track of them.
For more information, read these articles that discuss other instances and how to prevent this from happening to your events on social media:
- Facebook phishing scam hits live-streamed concerts
- Attempts to gain your personal information - phishing live stream scams