GREENSBORO, N.C. — A fake email that claimed it was from Walmart started all of this. I posted the story on my Facebook page and there were 42 comments, the majority of them were from "people" who claimed they could help others get their money back from a scam or help them restore a social media account.
At first glance, you might think people are just being neighborly and helping one another out, but no.
For example, there was a post claiming to be from a Nancy Raymond saying people should contact a certain company on Instagram because they can help you if you've been scammed. But then that same post was made by a man named Nelson. A little farther down the page, that same message was posted a third time by yet another "person".
"We are seeing a rise in scammers, most likely bots that are putting posts in stories about scams. I started researching some of the links and they're popping up on sheriff's pages, they're popping up everywhere," said Lechelle Yates of the Better Business Bureau.
Scam bots don't care whose page it is and sometimes messages like these are going to be posted for hours before someone notices and can hide them.
The takeaway here is, don't believe these "stories" from people you don't know. don't click on any links. Before you think someone is being Facebook neighborly and trying to help someone else out, look at this last example. It appears these folks are having a conversation and talking back and forth, but this same conversation was copied and pasted with different names.
