Image courtesy: Namibia Fact Check / Canva
Scammers are using COVID-19 conditions to prey on people’s desperation at a time that money is scarce or jobs are lost.
Facebook has long had a serious problem with scams and in these times of COVID-19 induced economic hardship scammers are seeing a lucrative opportunity, holding out the promises of jobs-for-a-fee or make-easy-money.
These scammers infiltrate public groups and post their scams, inviting the unsuspecting to share personal information or to click on links.
One such public group that appears to have been pervasively infiltrated, is one titled Namibia Facebook Police, with almost 75,000 members.
Some of the many scams viewable on this group page, include the following:
These scams invite or rely on page visitors to either click on links or to provide their personal contact or other details, either in the comments section of a post or by joining a WhatsApp or another messaging platform chat.
The aim of the scammers is to harvest as much personal contact and other information, which can be used to commit identity fraud, as well as to induce people to participate in a classic scam of spending money to make money by paying a ‘fee’ that is promised to unlock riches.
Namibia Fact Check‘s advice is simple:
Do NOT click on any links accompanying such posts.
Do NOT share cellphone numbers or other personal details on such posts.
For more information on how to identify scams on Facebook or other social media and messaging platforms, visit this valuable guide by Africa Check.