Mr Branding: 62% of Facebook Users Are Scammed Weekly According to This Report

Friday, December 9, 2022

62% of Facebook Users Are Scammed Weekly According to This Report

Facebook is the most popular social media platform in the world in terms of monthly active users, but it has also become a bit of a hub for scams with all things having been considered and taken into account. A cybersecurity firm by the name of Lookout recently did a deep dive into Facebook because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up revealing the proportion of scams that are implemented on the platform.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that 62% of Facebook users end up facing some type of scam on a weekly basis. The number of scams that are conducted on the platform increase during the holiday season, which means that Facebook might be less safe to use around Christmas than might have been the case otherwise. There are a lot of other revelations that this report has shown, all of which point to an increasingly serious problem on Facebook.

According to the findings in this report, nearly one out of every five Facebook users have been the victims of scams. Most of these scams try to convince people that they can win free gifts or prizes, with around 46% of Facebook users saying that they have lost upwards of a hundred dollars apiece.

What’s even worse is that scammers on Facebook are constantly changing up their practices so that they can keep tricking users. Many users become wise to the scams that are prevalent, but in spite of the fact that this is the case it’s usually not long before a brand new scam comes along that they might end up falling prey to.

It turns out that Facebook is the single worst platform from a scam perspective. By comparison, 60% of TikTok users suffer from scams each and every week. TikTok is followed by WhatsApp at 57%, Instagram at 56% and Twitter at 53%. LinkedIn is by far the safest platform in this regard, with just 31% of users saying that they almost got scammed each and every week.

As for the number of users that have become victims of scams, WhatsApp is the worst platform by that metric with 22% reporting getting scammed in the past. Facebook comes in second with 19%, with 15% of TikTok users also saying the same.

Scams on social media are clearly a huge problem, and they are often quite hard to predict. Human beings are always going to be prone to gullibility, and there will be no shortage of malicious actors who would be looking to cash in on that.