A Facebook scam in which the recipient is warned their business’s Facebook page has been disabled is targeting accounts…including the EMCRC’s Facebook page!

In these blogs, we often tell you about scams that we hear or read about. But today is a little different, as the EMCRC were directly targeted by a scam.

Our Facebook page inbox received an email purporting to be from the Meta Security Team, with the subject heading ‘Community Standards’.

In the email, which you can read in the graphic below, we were informed that our account had been disabled and that if we did not take action within 24 hours we would lose access to our page permanently.

But take a look at the wording. First of all the welcome seems clunky, with a simple ‘Hi’ followed by our company name. Almost robotic in its nature.

The text in the first paragraph uses camel case, meaning Every Word Begins With A Capital Letter, making it look unprofessional.

There’s no paragraph spacing either, but the biggest giveaway in the text lies within the sentence that reads: ‘Confirm your account within the next 24 hours our your page may be permanently disabled’. Spot the typo. It reads ‘our’ instead of ‘or’, making it ‘our your’ and rendering it nonsense.

Aside from the text, note the link. Does it look genuine? What’s minasshop.net? Although the letters ‘fb’ are included in the make-up of the entire link, there’s nothing to suggest that this is an authentic link taking you to Meta – one of the biggest organisations on planet Earth. Say what you like about Mark Zuckerberg, but you’d imagine his ‘Meta Security Team’ to be a little more professional.

Indeed, when we reported this to Meta via their live chat option, they were very prompt in responding, and confirmed that it is in fact spam, or a scam.

Here’s the transcript of a conversation we had with an operative named Ardy after we had supplied our Facebook page URL to be checked for violations...

"Upon checking, we found that the message you have received is not an authentic Facebook message. It's likely a spam/scam message. Sometimes they create fake emails and messages that look like they’re from Facebook. These emails often look like:

- False claims that you went against our Community Standards. - Warnings that something will happen to your account if you don't update it or take a certain action. - Claims or offers that sound too good to be true (such as winning a Facebook Lottery.)

However, please do not reply to the message or download any attachments. You should mark any suspicious emails as spam and delete it. Additionally, we would encourage you to report it to phish@fb.com or through the report link (https://www.facebook.com/help/138041858864063) that appears throughout Facebook.

For more information, we have included related Help Center articles as below:

- I got a suspicious email or message that looks like it came from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/225602007465207 - Protect yourself from phishing on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/217910864998172

And please rest assured, we have also checked your Page (https://www.facebook.com/EastMidlandsCRC/), and we are not seeing any violations, and the Page is still active as normal."

Ardy then closed the chat making sure the report had been resolved, and then finished with a customer satisfaction survey.

This kind of email may target small businesses or SMEs who rely on social media rather than a website to conduct their online activity and transactions, and it’s precisely why emails such as this that appear randomly with a warning and a call to action should be scrutinised and treated with caution.

Never click on a link you’re not sure about and instead, as we did, contact the company or organisation who – purportedly – sent you the email via their official channels – don’t respond to the email.

If something doesn't look or feel right, act with caution, investigate it and then report it if it is a scam.

Reporting

Report all Fraud and Cybercrime to Action Fraud by calling 0300 123 2040 or online. Forward suspicious emails to report@phishing.gov.uk. Report SMS scams by forwarding the original message to 7726 (spells SPAM on the keypad).