With impostor scams on the rise, the Better Business Bureau reminds customers of fake customer service accounts online, including those impersonating the BBB.
Sydney Waters, the regional director of the BBB, says that the fraudulent business accounts often target social media users through their complaints.
"Say you post an issue about a business on social media to speed up the response process. With this scam, consumers will get multiple different responses appearing to be from the business's customer support teams. Sometimes these responders will want to solve issues over DMs, where they'll ask for your personal information, like your phone number."
Waters recommends checking to see how long the account has been active and how many followers it has. Usually, legitimate accounts have long histories and a lot of followers.
Verification on social media platforms is a paid service, so pay more attention to spelling or grammar errors, stock image profile pictures, and illegitimate social media handles.
"If you start to get multiple responses from customer service accounts, take that as a major red flag and do your due diligence. Check and make sure that's a real business with a real customer service account that responded."
Watch out for fake account recovery services. Waters says that you should never have to pay to recover any accounts.
As always, never provide personal or financial information to a stranger online. Do not click any links that are sent to you. Scammers can send you fake URLs to steal your information or install malware on your device.
Websites may be designed to look legitimate, but the URL may be one or two letters off. When in doubt, go to https://www.bbb.org/, search the company website, and copy and paste that URL into the search.
