Facebook like farming Scam- Social media platforms like Facebook are medium to keep in touch with different people friends and loved ones, but it’s not like everything is fun and games. Even though these services are relatively secure, there are scammers on the site who can’t be stopped from engaging in behaviour that will identity and privacy of your account & device.

 

 

Most innocuous things you can do on Facebook, is clicking a post or a page which has indiscriminately likened content. Further in this post we will discuss “like-farming” also known as “Like-geoponics”. Its one of the most popular methods scammers use to enrapture you into liking content.

What is like-Farming?

Facebook like farming is one of Facebook’s most persistent scams and one that many of us have likely encountered without our knowledge that we have been exposed. If you’ve ever seen a post showing pretext for like, then you’ve probably seen functioning of like-farming. Some of the most common trick involves children debilitating with lifelong or terminal illnesses. Making an appeal to donate a certain amount of money for a cause based on how many likes the post gets or likes for celebrities or religious figures. Please note that not all of these posts are scams, but it can sometimes be hard to differentiate. This kind of scam may deal with more light-hearted content. Such as asking for likes to enroll users into a prize drawing. Inviting users to guess the answer to “impossible questions” or making requests to like and share “funny” pictures or videos.

Mr.Leo Kelion (Technology desk editor @ BBC) has also published a report on “Facebook investigates fake cancer child post”. The scam was  duping users into liking the photo of a child who supposedly had cancer. The photo was actually stolen from a mother whose child merely had chickenpox. In this regard, like-farming is a nuisance for both Facebook users and the victims who have their photos stolen to perpetrate these scams. But there are more ways it can affect users.

Why is like-farming harmful?

This kind of scams has wide range of consequences, harmless to catastrophic. Owners of several pages get engaged in act of like-farming just to stroke their own egos by attracting large number of followers. Like-farming scammers also attempt to make money off or steal some information of victims. They may do it: once a post has enough likes or comments, the scammer will edit the post to include a page to raise funds. They may add some pishing link which may either collect the payment information of someone looking to “donate” or completely take over their device. Even worse they can do, if you click on the malicious links which may allow the hacker to take over your Facebook account and spam your FB friends, who may willingly click on the link since it’s from someone they know i.e. you!.

Protect yourself from facebook like farming!

1.Avoid strange and unfamiliar friend request, pages or posts.

It’s something that everyone should be aware of, as scammers are waiting behind the screen for their victims. Remember that there’s almost no reasons you should respond to requests from pages and accounts you don’t know and have no way of verifying if they’re admissible.

2. Verify before you engage.

There’s no such kind of rules to distinguish a malicious like-farming post from an excessively genuine post. That’s why before hitting the like button you should take a look at the poster’s page to see what kind of content they produce. It should be noted that you can confirm the legitimacy of pages which claim to represent a major brand or company by looking for a verification check.

3. Stay away from emotionally manipulative contents.
4. Strengthen your Facebook security.
If you’re a victim of a scam or you spot any scam.
1.     Report the account to Facebook.

 

2.     Change your passwords and consider additional security steps.