Scammers are out there on Facebook and other sites.  They seek to scam unsuspecting people.  They create fake profiles then send friend requests to trick people into accepting the request.  Many do it for fake dating.  While deleting the friend request when you recognize its a fake and blocking the fake profiles are great things to do, you need to take it one step further and report it to Facebook.  I get 3-5 fake profiles a day send me friend requests. Yes, I said a day.  Every single day I get hit with them.  Most of the time they are easy to recognize but other times you have to look deeper.

You should check the profiles of everyone sending you a friend request.  Do you really know that man that says he’s a General in the military and has a picture of a 4-star general?  Military personnel are not trolling Facebook for people of the opposite sex while they are deployed overseas.  Especially high ranking military personnel.  Hope the scammers are reading this so they stop that stupid approach.

Another way they are scamming people is by creating a duplicate profile and sending a friend request to all that persons friends.  Double check the person.  I have been hit with a number of these kinds of fakes and know I’m already friends with the person, so I put in their name and see then I message them and report the profile.

There are many other things to watch for which is for another post.  I’ll share a couple here. This is primarily for those of you who recognize the fakes and simply delete them.  Don’t stop there!  You must report them to Facebook.  If you don’t report it as a fake so it gets investigated and removed, some other unsuspecting person may get scammed.  The more of us that report these profiles, the harder it will be for the scammers to scam people.  Also share this post with others to make them aware.  The more awareness the better.

How to Report a Fake Profile

1. Go into the fake profile.

By the way this picture has been used in more than one fake profile and contacted me more than once under different fake names.  “Miller Smith?”  Really?  Special Forces in Iraq?  Whatever.  Another thing, special forces or any other deployed unit has no access to social media while out on a mission.  When they return to base, access may not be available depending on the deployed location.  Obviously, a fake on several levels.  No friends, has some stupid bogus romance quote there.

2. In the cover photo to the left of message button click on the three dots.

3. Click “Report”

4. Select/Click “Report this profile”  then click Continue

5. On the next screen, click “This is a Fake Account,” then click Continue

6. Click “Submit to Facebook for Review”

7. At this point you can either click “Done” or “Block.”  I usually click “Block.”

8. Once you do that you will get this and have the option to put feedback.  I always put a sad face and then write a comment. I don’t know if anyone reads the comments but eventually if they get bombarded by comments someone has to take notice.

9. You will then get a message like this in the “support” inbox

10. Once Facebook reviews it and finds it to be a fake, you will get this message

Once you get the hang of this, it’s a pretty quick process.  Again, this is very important to report these fakes so someone else doesn’t get scammed.  I’ve reported hundreds of them, if each one of us does something to make this stop, we might have less people getting take advantage of.  I know friends whose photo’s have been used and also friends who have been scammed at different levels.

Please consider going beyond the delete and block and doing this process.  In the long run the more of us that do this, the better and safer we will be.