By REBECCA RUTHERFORD
Los Alamos
For the Los Alamos Daily Post
You can get some great bargains on Facebook Groups, Los Alamos and Santa Fe have some great online “yard sale” groups.
But you have to be careful or you could get scammed! If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
I was checking out a Santa Fe yard sale group when I saw this post:
Image of scam post in Santa Fe yard sale group. Courtesy image
All that stuff for free?? And a link to a group where you can get updates?? SIGN ME UP!!! Kidding … yeah no thanks. Nobody in their right mind would give away that stuff for free. Also if you look at the pictures, in the first one you see houses that really don’t look anything like most houses in Santa Fe. Curious, I went to check out the linked Facebook group.
Image of Facebook freebie group. Courtesy image
Why would she direct people to join a freebie group based out of San Antonio, Texas for updates on free things she is giving away in Santa Fe? Also a red flag. Checked out her profile as well.
Facebook profile image. Courtesy image
She’s only been a group member since October, and when I looked back at other things she had posted it was all weird “giveaways” like this for either cleaning out a house or food giveaways. None looked legit.
When I checked out her actual profile she is listed as a “grocery store” and she has 5 likes and 7 followers, and her only post is the profile picture. Looks like a fake profile to me. This was confirmed by the 3 reviews on her account.
Images from scammer account. Courtesy image
What’s the scam here? Chances are she reels people in with a free offer, then tells them she has to ship it, or there’s a holding fee, and insists on collecting it up front. Then she keeps your money and runs, because there’s no actual giveaway.
Or she might just be looking to scam you out of your Facebook login information. The scammer might message you saying they need your authentication code to verify that your account is legit, or some other reason. These are the multi factor authentication codes that Facebook sends you via text or email when they need to verify your account login requests are real. If you get scammed into sending these codes to someone else, they can use the codes to login to your account, steal your information, and lock you out of your account. Also not great.
There is no good outcome from interacting with these scam accounts, when you see posts like this you can report them to the group admin, and then just block the scammy account.
Stay safe online, get those deals, but watch out for all the scammers out to get your money and info!
Editor’s note: Rebecca Rutherford works in information technology at Los Alamos National Laboratory.