Why Doesn’t Facebook Make Blocking Scams Easier?

Although it’s not super popular to say these days, I’m a big fan of Facebook. I use it every day. I understand its pro’s and con’s. And all things considered, I’m a fan. I get daily access to my family and friends to read up on their lives, share pictures, and share news stories and the occasional rant. Hell, I think half my Christmas shopping came from Facebook advertisers this year. They’ve got my interests and tastes dialed in.

[Note: Excuse any typos. I didn’t submit this through my normal editing process.]

But one thing bothers me greatly. How come it is so, so difficult to report an ongoing criminal scam to Facebook and have them do anything about it? Here’s a recent case in point that happened just last night. I received the following unexpected message on Facebook (shown below).

I didn’t recognize the name or the profile picture, but it included a mutual friend’s name. The initial message was general enough that I didn’t yet catch on that this was a scam. I was even concerned that our “mutual friend” may have been hurt or killed and this mutual friend was reaching out to let me know. So, I sent a genuine reply, “What news?”

But the reply from the scammer (shown below) made it immediately clear that it was just a criminal scam trying to steal my money.

These types of scammers (also prolific on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.) attempt to trick you into believing there is some sort of award or grant that you can apply for to get FREE money. The scammer usually starts by social engineering the initial victim out of their social media logon credentials so they can use that victim’s account as their starting point. Then they send scam messages to the original victim’s friends. Because the new potential victims have some sort of trust with the original victim, they are more likely to fall for the scam.

The scam tries to get the new potential victims into contacting the scammer (or their involved representatives) to provide bank account details or a “token” payment. The victim is often asked to provide other identification information such as social security number (in the US) and a picture of their driver’s license. The victim is told that providing their banking details will allow the free money to be quickly transferred directly to their account, when instead the provided information is used to withdraw money. Or the victim is told that they must first pay a fee (usually $1000 or more) to pay for taxes, a processing fee, or some other claim like that. This is known as an advanced fee scam. I’m amazed by how many people believe that you have to pay money to get free money, but it obviously works or they wouldn’t do it (for decades).

I first wrote about this type of scam a few years ago when an elderly Army veteran’s daughter emailed me asking for help because her father was sending his banking details and money to a Twitter account of his squadron’s leader, which was obviously taken over by a scammer. Nothing the daughter said would convince her father that the free money claim was a scam. She was asking my help for additional ways to possibly convince her father that he was being the victim of a scam and not inline to get a bunch of unexpected free money. But the father could not be convinced that the other side of his online conversation was not his long-term, multi-decade, trusted friend and leader. The only thing that stopped the scam from being successful was the scammer’s involved email address and phone number being shut down (likely due to other ongoing scam attempts).

And that’s what makes these types of scams, especially Facebook so frustrating. Even when you know it’s a scam, it’s hard to get Facebook to do anything about. I get that Facebook has a difficult job at scale. They are putting down millions, if not tens of millions, of fraudulent accounts and scams every day. But when well-meaning people report one of these scams to Facebook, they often don’t do anything about it.

When I got this scam message, I immediately tried to notify Facebook about it so they could shutdown the account so other innocent people were not scammed. In every social media service, how you report these fraudulent events or accounts is different. But in Facebook, you can click on the three little dots on the account’s profile (see below) and choose to report the profile.

When you click on the ‘Find support or report profile’ option, you can see the following options:

Unfortunately, none of them work. This scam is using either a real person’s taken over account or is simply a fake account. When I choose most of these options, I’m then presented with the following prompt (see below):

Does this go against Facebook’s community standards? Hmm. Hmm. It’s a scam message trying to steal money from innocent people. I think that qualifies. So, I report it to Facebook. And in every case when I’ve reported it, this is the message I get back from Facebook…every time (see below):

I don’t get it! How could an automated AI algorithm or a human being see what was being done by this account and just say, “not a problem, business as usual”? It’s very frustrating. Why isn’t it easier to report fraudulent accounts or actions and have them removed? There is no easy option for saying “This is a scam!”, please block the account until the rightful user re-assets control.

There are other ways to report these types of actions and accounts to Facebook. They give you dozens of pages of nearly useless information and steps to follow to report the accounts. Like the option I did use above, none of them work or when I do report them I get “not violating community standard” replies.

Facebook, please make it easier to report scams. And for goodness sake, stop telling me that what I reported did not violate community standards. If it had a cuss word in it, COVID disinformation, or a nursing mother’s bare breast, you’d block it in seconds. Heck, I probably wouldn’t need to report it. But known, long-time, popular money scams?? You guys can’t stop these? You can’t make it easier to report these and get them blocked?

I don’t believe it. Facebook, help your users!