This morning, like every morning, I checked my Facebook notifications for the many pages and groups that I manage. One notification was suspicious. It came from a page called “Your Post Goes Against Our Community Standards.”
Naturally, I needed to investigate this notification. Right away it looked fishy. The scam page is obviously not connected to Facebook or Meta. Here are a few things that made me question the authenticity of this page and its notification.
- Terrible grammar! This is usually one of the easiest ways to tell if something is a scam. Read their post in the screenshot below. It’s riddled with errors.
- the URL for the page was not a Meta or Facebook business URL that would be used if this were real
- the notification goes to a page post rather than a Meta Business webpage
- the images on the page are not official Facebook or Meta images (no logo)
- the post in question had tagged many other business pages, most of which were real estate agents and small businesses
- the URL in the post that the page wanted me to click on was not associated with Meta business (see screenshot)
- a closer look at the offending page’s post shows they had created several similar posts in recent history
I immediately reported the page, so it has been shut down.
This is not a new scam. You may receive a similar notification from a different Facebook page. The page may change, but the scam likely remains the same. They want you to click their link, at which point they will ask for your Facebook login credentials. That’s what they’re after. Once someone with nefarious intent gets your login, they can wreak havoc on your business.
It’s even possible that the offending page was originally a legit page that got hacked by a similar scam. So they may also be a victim.
This is just another example of many such scams out there.
IMPORTANT: before logging into a site from a post or email, ALWAYS check the URL to make sure it is authentic. When in doubt, go directly to the site to log in. Report the questionable URL to the legitimate site.
UPDATE: 4/7/2023 New Scammer
We’ve got another scam page! This page called itself “NOTIF – Your account has been restricted.” This looks scary for anyone who isn’t familiar with scammer tactics. But, if you see a notification like this in Facebook, don’t freak out. It’s very likely fake.
This is the page that created the post. It is a fake page. Notice that they have no likes, no followers, and the link they want you to click on does not have Meta, Facebook, or FB in it.
Update July 2023
These scammers are still at it! Recently, one of my clients received an email from one of these scammers. Fortunately, she knew not to open anything from the email. She double-checked it with me first, and it was indeed a scam. Later, her page was tagged by another fake Facebook page.
If your page receives a notification that looks iffy, go look at the actual page that is tagging you. It’s usually easy to tell that it’s a fake page. Untag your page, and report the page as scammers.
Below is a screenshot of the latest fake page. First, they spelled cyber wrong. 🙄 Second, the page has no likes or followers. Third, they set the page up as an Entertainment website. Fourth, if you were on the page and scrolled down, you would see that every page post looks like the one in the screenshot, and the posts have all been created in the last 12 hours. It’s a very new page. Don’t let the apparent millions of followers on other channels fool you, it’s all BS.
These scammers are constantly creating fake pages and emails. If you get a notification or email that looks like it’s from Facebook, it’s probably a scam. Facebook simply doesn’t alert you to copyright infringement in that manner.
It’s important to also note that these emails or fake page posts do not tell you what image was the offending image. That’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this works. If you have actually used a copyrighted image anywhere online, you will be notified of the offending image(s). You won’t have to wonder which image/video/song you need to remove.
Update: September 20, 2023
The scammers seem to be moving away from creating a fake page and tagging businesses. Now they are using Messenger to try to scam small businesses. This means you can report the message as spam, but you can’t report a fake page as a scammer.
Here’s what we’ve been seeing a lot of lately. Scammers will send a message to a small business saying they have violated copyright law. Sometimes they even use the Meta logo. They try to fool businesses into thinking they have committed copyright infringement and need to click a shady looking link in order to fix the issue.
⚠DON’T CLICK THE LINK!
If you do accidentally click the link, ⚠DON’T PUT IN YOUR LOGIN CREDENTIALS!
Report it as spam. If you’re not sure, reach out to me to check on it.
The below YouTube video goes into detail showing the Meta Messenger Scam and how to report it as spam and delete it.
Right after I created the above video, the same client got tagged by another scam page. These scammers are really “working” hard right now to try to scam small businesses. Unfortunately, the scam page in question appears to have taken over an agent’s legitimate business page. That’s what they do and why they want your login credentials. So that they can then target other businesses from your real page. It causes major issues for the victim.
What Does An Actual Post-Violation Look Like?
If your page, group, or post has actually gone against Facebook’s community standards in a way that could affect your page or account being shut down, the notification would actually come from Meta. Meta business pages tend to be plain and image free. They have the Meta logo and the URL would include the word Meta, Facebook, or FB.
Furthermore, if one of your posts actually goes against Facebook’s community standards, they remove the post. They do send you a notification, but that will likely include the actual post in question and where it was posted to. They also usually give you the means to dispute the issue in question.
If you receive a similar notification that looks fishy, report it to Facebook as spam.
If you ever receive an email or notification that seems scary and wants you to put in your login credentials, be wary. Get someone else to look at it (sometimes a second set of eyes helps) or reach out to a digital marketing professional.
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