A study conducted by TechRadar found that a lot of social media users are well aware of methods of spotting scams, but encounter a huge number of them weekly.
Participants of the survey were asked which social media platforms were used by them. Among the different platforms, Facebook scored the highest with 80% of the users being active on the platform, with Instagram at 68%, and TikTok and Twitter almost tied at 50%.
LinkedIn ranked 35% concerning usage while Whatsapp scored 33% among the respondents. They scored much less compared to the other competitors. Moreover, 6.6% of the participants used other social media platforms, with 3.7% didn’t use any platform at all.
When asked how frequently users encountered any scams on their respective social media apps, the results were very even. Over a third of the respondents said they encountered a scam once every day. Moreover, over a quarter said they encountered a scam every week. Furthermore, 15% said they received a scam every month, and under a third said they encountered a scam in more than one month.
There’s been a significant rise in the number of scams ever since reaching the peak during the pandemic in 2021. They’ve maintained this trend in 2022 as well, especially during Black Friday and the prime sales period, the number of scams sees a huge spike in popularity.
But 34% and 30% of the respondents felt very confident and confident in their ability to not be fooled by scams they encountered. A quarter of the respondents said they were a little confident in their ability to detect scams while 10% said they weren’t confident at all.
But these reports might not be accurate with the knowledge of the number of users that fall for phishing campaigns and make offers on social media.
Crypto scams have also picked up the pace in recent years with the overall expansion of the crypto community and market. Fake scams promote rare investment opportunities that promise huge returns for those gullible enough to fall for them. Videos of the billionaire Elon Musk have been used to attract people's attention and trick them into falling for such scams.
Anything you encounter on social media which seems like it’s something that looks way too promising or too good to be true is most likely a scam. You can also check the address of the sender before clicking on any links and make sure that it leads you to the official site. Fake websites also don’t have a lot of effort put in so you can find grammatical mistakes and just look unprofessional.
Read next: Instagram Ad Revenues Grow, but Meta Still Relies on Facebook for 58.5%
Participants of the survey were asked which social media platforms were used by them. Among the different platforms, Facebook scored the highest with 80% of the users being active on the platform, with Instagram at 68%, and TikTok and Twitter almost tied at 50%.
LinkedIn ranked 35% concerning usage while Whatsapp scored 33% among the respondents. They scored much less compared to the other competitors. Moreover, 6.6% of the participants used other social media platforms, with 3.7% didn’t use any platform at all.
When asked how frequently users encountered any scams on their respective social media apps, the results were very even. Over a third of the respondents said they encountered a scam once every day. Moreover, over a quarter said they encountered a scam every week. Furthermore, 15% said they received a scam every month, and under a third said they encountered a scam in more than one month.
There’s been a significant rise in the number of scams ever since reaching the peak during the pandemic in 2021. They’ve maintained this trend in 2022 as well, especially during Black Friday and the prime sales period, the number of scams sees a huge spike in popularity.
But 34% and 30% of the respondents felt very confident and confident in their ability to not be fooled by scams they encountered. A quarter of the respondents said they were a little confident in their ability to detect scams while 10% said they weren’t confident at all.
But these reports might not be accurate with the knowledge of the number of users that fall for phishing campaigns and make offers on social media.
Crypto scams have also picked up the pace in recent years with the overall expansion of the crypto community and market. Fake scams promote rare investment opportunities that promise huge returns for those gullible enough to fall for them. Videos of the billionaire Elon Musk have been used to attract people's attention and trick them into falling for such scams.
Anything you encounter on social media which seems like it’s something that looks way too promising or too good to be true is most likely a scam. You can also check the address of the sender before clicking on any links and make sure that it leads you to the official site. Fake websites also don’t have a lot of effort put in so you can find grammatical mistakes and just look unprofessional.
Read next: Instagram Ad Revenues Grow, but Meta Still Relies on Facebook for 58.5%
