Ep. 220: The $5,000 Mistake: Inside a Facebook Scam

“What the Hack?” is DeleteMe’s true cybercrime podcast hosted by Beau Friedlander

Beau: Brianne. Okay, so what happened? Thanks for reaching out to me,

Brianne: You know, I thought of you because my dad, he lost his Facebook account. He ended up Googling Facebook customer service, which both you and I know that doesn’t exist. He got in touch with somebody who was a bad actor.

Tony: I call the number. Hey. And in this case, one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy. “Hello, how can I help you?” Oh, bingo. I am ecstatic at this point, after a week, a week of pulling my hair out, wondering how am I gonna get this back? How is this gonna work? Where- somebody answered the damn phone. I can’t believe it.

Brianne: They ended up convincing him to download this app and they walked him through everything over the phone, took control of his phone via this app.

Beau: This is the story of what happens when a musician- it doesn’t have to be a musician; this week it is, and a scammer meet in a system where social media users cannot get the help they need. I’m Beau Friedlander, and this is What the Hack, the show that asks, in a world where your data is everywhere, how do you stay safe online? Tony, did I lose you buddy?

Tony: What happened?

Beau: This is Tony Bon Giovanni. He is the father of my colleague Brianne Smith. Put it the other way. 

Tony: Well, my little screen changed, but you’re stil…

Beau: Just put it like this. Alright. I got a little bit of an echo here. I think you have left, the old tab is open on your browser. You have a different tab open on your browser? Okay. So is your dad… I know I’m not supposed to say senior citizen according to my friends at the AARP. Is your dad an older adult?

Brianne: Yes, he’s…

Beau: How old are we talk- is he somebody who could possibly be taken advantage of as a result of that?

Brianne: Yeah. You trust people. You know, I think that generation was raised in a world of trust, and he is not savvy with these scams that are happening today.

Beau: Yeah. Okay, so I’m gonna talk to him. Anything I need to know?

Brianne: No. I mean, he loves to tell stories, so he will tell you everything I’m sure.

Beau: Tony Bongiovanni. Now, I heard about your story through your daughter who works with me. She’s a colleague, and it is a story that I know has happened to a lot of older adults. The sound here is a little different because we had to move to a different platform that aligned with Tony’s device and also his skill level in using those devices. I’m not saying what he was using because we don’t do that on this show; it can help people get hacked. But Tony, you are one of the people that your neighbors call when they’re having a problem with devices, correct?

Tony: They do. Yes, they do. I got a couple, I have two neighbors. They say, what should I do about this? So I try to help ’em. And I say, well, let’s look at this, or let me come and see it. And I’ll try to do my best to help you fix the problem. And we usually get it taken care of. 

Beau: Now, what kind of, what kind of problems are we talking about? Is this like not being able to get audio on your TV or not being able to get your TV to get to your cable? Or is it technical stuff like getting your smart thermostat on, or what is it? 

Tony: It’s usually like a smartphone issue. They don’t know how to get an app or how to get the simplest things that we would all know- that we’d think we would all know, but we don’t all know because some of this stuff is just beyond some folks that they just don’t understand how do I get that app to work? Or how do I download a, a picture to my phone? How do I save something onto my phone? How do I send a link from my phone that I see to share it with someone else on a text message?

Beau: I play a similar role in some of my family circles, and so I totally understand where you’re coming from. Do you spend a lot of time online or are you mostly a person who spends time in real life? 

Tony: I usually… I read my phone every morning, check out the news, go to various articles, share them with other people in text messages, look up various things that I wanna seek out, whether it’s on Facebook or something that I had to do with my band that I have in Pennsylvania that I still currently do handle bookings for.

Beau: Did you just say you had a band in Pennsylvania?

Tony: Yes. That’s what I’ve done most of my life. Back in the seventies, in my twenties, I was very active, about 10 years on the road. Back in those days there were bands six nights a week performing in hotel lounges, and we eventually became a out of Pittsburgh, a five piece Las Vegas-style show band that did two floor shows each night, traveled anywhere out of Pittsburgh and in Pittsburgh to Illinois, Michigan, Virginia, Florida, up and down the eastern seaboard, and performed six nights a week in those showroom-type hotel venues. That’s what I did. And by the way, that was in the seventies, in my twenties and it was a lot more fun to be 20 in the seventies than it is being 70 in the twenties.

Beau: You’ve been playing music and it sounds like that’s one of the main reasons you are online. You use it for your band.

Tony: I handle most of all the bookings or dealing with the agents. And that was my part of the job. Everybody had a job in the band, you know, from–

Beau: But you played too, right?

Tony: Oh, yeah, yeah. Drums, vocals, sing 

Beau: Oh, so you were the Phil Collins of the band. 

Tony: Yeah. That’s the one. That’s the one. You got that right.

Brianne: I mean, they had some original tunes back in the seventies, but…

Beau: Any hits, like any billboard-type hits?

Brianne: No billboard-type hits. Noo, they were close to a record deal from what I was told. But…

Beau: Nashville. Or… Nashville. Huh? Memphis?

Brianne: Yes. He was here back in May and he played some of his original music for me, so that was cool. That was, it was good. I liked it. It was fun to listen to, but he was….

Beau: What are we talking about? Disco or rock and roll, or…

Brianne: Mostly disco, like he’s from the disco era, so you know, all of it’s coming back around. He’s a huge influence in my life for loving music because I was raised with all sorts of music in the house. So I was the kid who grew up knowing, you know, all the seventies bands and the lyrics and studying them, but I digress. He lost his Facebook account. This is kind of like his lifeline for his band page, which can be devastating, especially if you’re an older adult. You’re used to keeping in touch with a lot of friends and family members.

Beau: Tony, let’s go back to the day this happened. You said you woke up and when you do that, usually you check the news or… on your phone, right? You check Facebook and, and that’s how this all started.

Tony: One morning I came out to look at my phone and as I was looking at various things, I pulled up on my Facebook. And it said I needed to log in, which is unusual. I never usually need to log in.

Beau: So you were looking at Facebook, and then for no reason that you could discern it said, Hey, you gotta log in.

Tony: Correct. But it then it said I couldn’t log in. That wasn’t any good. And that it said my Instagram had been disabled and it directed me to go to my Instagram. It showed me that and I looked and said, what is this? It says, you have been disabled due to posting of content against our community standards, from the account created by Jose Hernandez and some numbers after it, and with an account linked to my account called Bongiovanni Tony, which I would never. I don’t do that. And then I couldn’t find why or what the content was. And beyond that it said I could file an appeal in the next 180 days. And if I did not, or if it wasn’t accepted in 180 days, I would be permanently disabled. So that’s upsetting ’cause I had over 4,000 people between Pennsylvania with my band I put back together in the- about 10 years ago. ‘Cause I was using that to promote dates and things that the band was doing. I started to accumulate more and more musicians, nightclub venues, people anywhere that I could promote, where I might be performing with another band or just meeting people in general. And so it was over 4,000 and somebody said, well, you’re really proud of that number, aren’t you? I said, yeah, I guess I am. I don’t know.

Beau: So Tony, you had a pretty big following on Facebook. You had over 4,000 people. And did your Instagram have a big following or not really?

Tony: No, I hardly- I never really used Instagram.

Beau: But you got a message saying that a handle that wasn’t you, but looked like you had been banned for posting things that were against the community guidelines.

Tony: There goes my 4,000 people, my two other pages, my old band and everything gone.

Beau: So I hear you saying it wasn’t just your profile, it was everything. I mean, the band page, the friends, all those years of building this world online, gone in an instant. 

Tony: They just banned me and no one can find me anywhere on Facebook anymore. My daughter looked, the wife looked, nobody can find me. So I ended up just creating a new Facebook account. How that works? I don’t know. It was still me, but without all my people and without my other pages. So the band. The lead singer was an administrator also, and she just went ahead and created a new band page, but of course, all those followers that used to be there, they’re gone. It’s gone. So she just created a new one, and that was… that’s the end of that. But this is where it starts to get scary. Where I lost money.

Beau: Okay. I know we’ve said it, but I just want to recap here. Tony wakes up, checks Facebook, he’s locked out. There’s a message that says he’s been posting bad stuff, doesn’t meet community standards, but there’s another one that says that his account is now linked to someone named Jose Hernandez, which I don’t know if that- that seems like a red herring, but at any rate, he had more than 4,000 followers. That’s gone. Now, here’s the thing, what happened to Tony isn’t rare. We’ll be back after the break. Losing the account was just the beginning. What happened next to Tony Bon Giovanni is when things went from bad to much, much worse.

Tony: I was desperate. I was seeking information as to how to contact Facebook, talk to somebody. And when I called the real number with Facebook, it said that that, no, there is no phone support. You have to go to the Facebook page, Meta support and find support, help, anything of that nature and do it that way, which I had already been that route, so nobody answers the phone. If I could get a hold of Mark Zuckerberg, I’d like to, so yeah. Yeah. Right. You owe me. You owe me.

Beau: Well, you know, the funny thing is 4,000 followers for a band that tours actually has a monetary value. If you have that many followers, that does have value.

Tony: That was me. That was my people friends. Yeah. 4,000, over 4,000 on Facebook.

Beau: That has a very real value, not just personal, not just emotional, but also like you used it, didn’t you? 

Tony: Yes, absolutely. 

Beau: So what happened next? Now you can’t find your account. You can’t figure out even what was posted to get you in trouble in the first place. You can’t get in touch with anyone at Meta. Now what?

Tony: You know, never give up. Never give in, never surrender. So I keep looking. I’m Googling Facebook support and I see this post. And I see this phone number. It says Meta Facebook support. Oh. Oh. You know, I might be tech savvy, but I didn’t pick up on the fact that it, above it it said ad supported or something.

Beau: Sponsored. Sponsored ad.

Tony: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Beau: So you Googled it and you found this sponsored content that said, here’s a phone number for meta.

Tony: Oh boy, am I excited. Well, what do you think I did? I called the number.

Beau: Of course.

Tony: I call the number. Hey. And in this case, one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy. “Hello, how can I help you?” Oh, bingo. I’m ecstatic at this point, after a week, a week of pulling my hair out, wondering how am I gonna get this back? How is this gonna work? Where- somebody answered the damn phone. I can’t believe it.

Beau: Uh-huh.

Tony: “Well, how can I help you?” Oh, I just told him I am so, oh, I am so glad you, Oh, I’m so glad you answered the phone. I am so ex- now, He knows I’m excited and he knows how excited I am because it’s like that in my voice. I am so happy that, oh, I need your help. I need your help. “Sure, sure. How can I help you?” Well, my, my Facebook account- and I tell that story that I told you about the whole deal. Waking up, looking at it. Instagram, Jose Hernandez, blah, blah. “Okay. Okay. Okay. Let me… I’ll help you. I’ll get you taken care of that is.” He should have just stopped him when he said, I’ll get you taken. ‘Cause that’s what it was. I got taken. Not care of, but taken. And he said, “okay, well, we’ll get that. He said, okay, well, alright. Couple things: we have to verify your identity.” Well, sure, sure. Of course you do. Of course. Verify my identity. Of course you do. Okay. I’m all in. Alright. What do I gotta do? “Well, let’s start with the…” and we talked for about five minutes and then we went on to this verify identity. And yeah, okay, fine. Alright. And it started with, let’s download this app. Okay. And I can’t remember the first one, darn. But the second one was called Phantom, P-H-A-N-T-O-M. And I downloaded both of them, and then he asked me to use one of those two and take a picture of my driver’s license, front, back, upload that.

Beau: The details get a little messy here, but, but the gist is this, the scammers had Tony download a third-party app that let them move things around on his equipment, right? One of them was called something like Phantom something, something, another one was a secure messaging app. Probably… I think it was Signal, but who knows? Both of these are real apps. I don’t doubt that, that you can find in real app stores. Because remember, an app, it could be very legitimate and be used in completely illegitimate shady ways. I’ve used Signal, you know, I do use signal. Scammers use it too. And the reason, you know, there’s no record of the conversation with Tony is because it was by design, right on the app. This all looked super official, but it was anything but standard protocol, or it looked official to someone who didn’t know what official would look like in this scenario, which is it wouldn’t look like anything at all because it doesn’t exist. So under the guise of verifying his identity, these scammers convinced Tony to upload photos of his driver’s license, which really does matter. Huge problem.

Tony: I took the picture front and back and then uploaded it on that app. So I did that and I sent my driver’s license information. Well, following the driver’s license information, that was in, you know, right into about 20 minutes into that conversation. And we talked a little bit more. He said, “okay, thank you very much. Thank you. We’ll work on this.” And we- I don’t know why we went about a half an hour in a conversation and he then he finally told me, “Okay, well what I need to do, and thank you for downloading the apps and the information I asked you for, your driver’s license. I need to transfer you to our identity verification unit.” Oh, oh, okay. All right, fine. So he does, and a guy gets on the phone and Dave says, “Okay, well we need to- yes, I’m with the verification, identity verification unit and we’ll process this through and we’ll get you started. So a couple things we need to do to identify, verify your identity,” and this is where it gets very embarrassing. I should have known better. So we open up that other app. The screen-sharing app, which I’ve done in the past when I used to work from home to have my folks see my screen. So I knew what that was about. And once we did that, I opened my phone and I scroll across. He said, “Go, keep going.” So he says, “Oh, I see, I see you have PayPal.” Yes, I do. I have PayPal. He said, “Go ahead and open that.” So I opened PayPal and he sees $57. Well, that’s not of any value, is it? $57. So he goes on to- he didn’t say that. That’s what I’m thinking in hindsight. He says, “Okay, well you can close that and let’s, let’s look further.” He said, “Oh, wait a second. I see you have, you have Robinhood.” Oh. And if you’re not familiar with Robinhood, I started playing with that almost 10 years ago to buy a little bit of stock here and there. 

Beau: So you were buying stock or you’re buying parts of stock on Robinhood. You had, did you have a decent sized portfolio there?

Tony: Well, I would, I’m looking at about 12,000. 

Beau: Okay. 

Tony: And he saw that number automatically.

Beau: Okay.

Tony: And he thought, oh, bingo. I think he realized, oh, there might be something. And he said, “Oh,” and we looked down a little bit and he saw some crypto. He said, “Oh, I see you have some cryptocurrency.” I said, yeah, not much. There’s like $800 or something. Not much of anything. So that’s where he said, “Oh, I see you have some cryptocurrency.” Yes, I do. “Okay. Well, you know that could work.” ‘Cause I think he noticed something I had called margin investing. And you know, about a week before that is when, week before all this happened, three weeks before that, I saw a note on my Robinhood that said, you can enable margin investing and have access to bigger trades quicker. And I thought, oh, well that sounds great. I don’t know. You know, I just said, okay. I clicked it. So I enabled it. And for all that time I kept trying to remind myself I should look up what the hell is margin investing. [laughter] What is that? I got it, but I’m not sure I know what it is. So, you know, and little did I know I was gonna be making a big loan against my balance.

Beau: So margin investing is just borrowing money from your broker, using your own stocks as collateral, so you don’t have to sell them to do more trades. Think of it like a line of credit basically tied to your portfolio. You can usually, you can borrow up to about 40% of what you already own.

Tony: So he says, okay, you know what? Let’s do this. And he decides we want to make a purchase. So we do that with the margin investing. And he is said, “Choose the… yeah, Ethereum.” And I choose it. He says, “Okay, well, all right. Put in purchase and put in something like,” he’s told me $900 or something like that. I think that’s what it was. 900 And this is where it gets, starts to get embarrassing ’cause I did that. And he said, “Okay, go on down and click okay.” Okay. “Click okay again.” Click okay. You know, you’re agreeing to the things there, very little time to read it all. And he said, “Okay, then confirm.” Okay.

Beau: So this is where the scammer moves quickly. They have to give a reason why they’re even in an app like Robinhood. Now remember, this all started as a Facebook issue, and obviously Tony’s gonna get suspicious soon. Did the guy on the phone tell you why you were even in Robinhood?

Tony: He says, If we see that those go through, we can verify your identity. Oh, okay. He said, “We can go back now, go back. Go back.” So this starts to happen very quickly and he says, “Okay, now get that again. Let’s see that again.” So we do it again. He says, “Put in 705.” 7 0 5. 7 0 5. Okay. 705. All right. “And then go on back down, do what you did again.” Okay. Like, okay. Okay. Okay. And then confirm. All right. I’m wondering what- All of a sudden, oh, go back, just go back again. Go back again. Alright. “Try that again. Do go back to the Ethereum. Go and then put in 901.” 901. Alright. He said let’s try 901. 901. I click okay. Okay. Okay. And as I went down, I saw where it said, you know, when you do this, you can’t take it back. Oh, all right. He said, “Click confirm.” I hit confirm, I said, Hey, Steven, or whatever his name was, you know, are you sure we should be doing? I don’t know. I don’t know if we should be doing this. This seems, this seems like I’m getting kind of uncomfortable. “Oh, no, no, no.” He says, “No, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. It’s fine. You trust me. You trust me. It’s, we’re getting your identity verified and we’ll get your Facebook all back in order as soon as we see all this goes through. We can get it verified and everything will be fine.”

Beau: So that’s kind of like when they do like a one penny charge on a credit card to see if it-

Tony: Yeah. Yeah. 

Beau: So just so no one gets lost here, the scammer has convinced Tony that the reason they are in his Robin Hood account is because they need to verify him. We’ve established that. Now, it makes sense. If you can get into a financial account, which, you know, has very good security, you must be who you say you are. And we’ve all had that experience of like, they’ll deposit a penny, you get the penny, you can keep the penny, whatever. Tony wants his Facebook account and he’s focused on that. Scammer knows this. And Tony may be familiar with this kind of cadence, this kind of ask.

Tony: And then we- and we did it two more times. 

Beau: Okay.

Tony: I said, well, I don’t know if we should see this any longer anymore. He said “No, no. We just have to be sure these go through. We just have- No, you, it’s okay.”

Beau: But was he saying like some weren’t going through or was he just…

Tony: No, no. He’s just saying, “No, it’s fine. We just have to be sure that this goes through so that we can, you know,” and at that point, I’m getting ready to like, you know, what’s going on here? And here it happened six times. I thought it happened four.

Beau: Yeah. 

Tony: And when I looked back at it it was six times, six transactions. ‘Cause I get the email for every one of them. And when I looked back I saw six of them. I didn’t think I did that six times. That’s how quick this seemed to just fly by six times, and the amounts all added up to about a little over $4,800.

Beau: Six transactions. Nearly $5,000 gone in minutes, and the scammers weren’t finished. Tony knew something was wrong, but the damage was already done. After the break, what happened when he finally stopped answering and the fight to recover what he lost.

Brianne: I was like, Dad, this doesn’t sound good.

Beau: This is Brianne Smith again, Tony’s daughter.

Brianne: He called me. I wanna say, well, it was already after he had gone through everything with the scammers, but he did call me and as soon as he said, you know, I looked the line, or I looked up the phone number online for Facebook customer service help desk.

Brianne: And I’m like, oh Dad. Like I hate to break it to you-

Beau: Oh, ’cause you were like, that doesn’t exist.

Brianne: Yeah, that’s not real. There’s no customer service for Facebook. Not a phone number you can call.

Beau: You know what’s interesting, Brianne? I’m looking right now. And from what I understood when I talked to your dad, he googled how to recover his Facebook account.

Brianne: Mm-hmm.

Beau: The first thing that popped up was a sponsored ad, which is what a lot of people don’t understand: the first results that come up, no matter what search engine you’re using have been paid for, and they may not be what you’re looking for. And so I just looked though, and you want to hear something wild and good? There’s no sponsored links on that request. Google has figured that one out.

Brianne: That’s good. That must have been reported, I’m sure

Beau: Reported and reported and reported.

Brianne: Yeah. I’m sure. Part of the problem is that you have to learn to not trust people. And that’s sad that we’re in that time of, you know, our humanity where we can’t trust one another. But when it comes to online activity, I think that’s probably the key, is you have to build up a level of, you know, build your boundaries, build your walls, and be a little bit less trusting of those around you.

Beau: The other thing that it requires, which is I think really hard for the generations that came before me and before you: you kind of have to be impolite

Brianne: You do. Yeah.

Beau: And it does not come easy to people who’ve been, you know, were raised a certain way.

Brianne: No. Raised with manners. Raised with kindness and raised with interacting with others to to treat, you know, the old saying, treat each other the way you would wanna be treated.

Beau: The Golden Rule does not exist online. Do you talk to him about this stuff?

Brianne: To a degree. I mean, we really talked about it when the incident occurred with his Facebook and getting hacked, but it’s hard I think for that to really sink in because it really is a way of life. It’s like, you have to change your habits, and that’s not easily done when as you know, when you’re an older adult, it’s not easy for them to change their lifestyle.

Beau: Nope.

Brianne: Unless they’re a little bit inclined to be paranoid. And then I think it, you know, which it’s a healthy paranoia because that paranoia is protecting you. But my mom would be on the other side of the spectrum, like she is overly paranoid, but that will work in her favor if somebody ever tries to make her a target,

Beau: Yeah. So if you’re part of a couple out there and you’re listening and you’re the nice one, maybe you shouldn’t be the one online.

Brianne: Yeah. Hand it over to the one who’s okay telling people no.

Beau: And Tony was the nice one on the phone call. Right? The scammers knew it. And so it went the way these things go far too often. 

Tony: I said, you know what, now I’m really uncomfortable. I’m a little bit older. It’s almost been two hours now. I need to go in and I need the facilities, I need to go in the house. And he says, “Well, I’ll call you right back.” I said, no, no, that’s okay. Just… he said, “Well, when?” I said, not right now. He said, “About 30 minutes?” No, I, and I just thought, what am I gonna- “How about four o’clock?” And that was about 1:30 in the afternoon. Okay. I’ll call you, I call you at four o’clock. “Okay. Alright. Goodbye.” Okay. And sure enough. Then I was, you know, I’m thinking, what the hell did I just do? What the- what did I just do? What did I just do? Oh, oh, I don’t know. About four o’clock comes, he calls, I did not answer. He calls again. Did not answer. One minute later he calls again, no answer. I didn’t answer that. No. At one point they must have had to call me at one point, and by the way, because I said, it says Michigan, Michigan, Michigan. I said, what? I thought you guys were in California. “Oh, no, no, no. Well, we work from all over the country.” I said, well, that makes sense. I used to work from home, so I know that people do work from all over the country. Okay. Michigan. And he had sort of an off-accent. But then after that he called, like I said, four o’clock. I did not answer those calls, and that’s when I got on the horn with my daughter. I said, this is what I think might have happened. So we start looking all this up. She cannot find me anywhere on Facebook. She cannot find any Jose Hernandez anywhere. She told me- well, I called that number Dad, and I didn’t talk to them, but they called me back and I didn’t answer. They called me three times and I did not answer. She said, okay, well. Then she called that number that they gave me and the number that I had originally called about Facebook Meta support. She called both of those phone numbers for me. But anyways, it went nowhere. It was too late. 

Beau: So that’s when it hits you.

Tony: The money was taken out and of course it went through a crypto wallet, which are untraceable. You’re not getting your money back. And that was the point that I realized when Robin Hood wrote back and said, it looks like you were a victim of a scam. And unfortunately there’s nothing that we can do about it. But here are the suggestions. And they of course, list 30 different things that you should and should not do. 

Beau: Yeah. 

Tony: And I’m thinking, boy am I so embarrassed about this. So eventually I had to go to buy little bit of savings that was left somewhere else and make most of that portion and move $5,000 to Robinhood to cover the margin and little extra for the interest that they charge. So that got taken care of and I was taken.

Beau: And so what was the grand total?

Tony: Well, I moved 5,000 out, so I moved 5,000 into Robinhood. My total was over 4,800, like $4,867. Plus the interest. Wasn’t a lot of interest, so I just took an even 5,000 and sent it over to Robinhood, covered it all, wanted to be sure it was handled so I could close- You cannot close margin investing while there is a balance unless you pay the balance in the margin section.

Beau: Mm-hmm. 

Tony: That has to be satisfied. 

Beau: Yeah. 

Tony: Which I did and made sure that was done. That’s why I moved the five grand to make sure that was enough to handle it all. Done. End of story, embarrassing. I cannot believe I allowed that to go on as long as I did ’cause I was so desperate to get my Facebook account back, that he wanted to verify my identity by those transactions and realizing afterwards. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Sad but true.

Brianne: Interestingly enough, I had a friend who lost access to her Facebook the same time as my dad. She got reported. Just like he got reported for something that he didn’t do, lost access. She got reported for something she didn’t do and lost access, and I was able to tell her, Hey. You know, just so you know, this kind of sounds similar to the situation my dad’s going through. Don’t reach out to anybody. Don’t ask for this account to be restored. Just, you know, you’re gonna have to kind of like let it go. But at least she wasn’t targeted as well. ‘Cause I think that’s kind of what they were hoping for was if we are able to hack into their Facebook, get it taken down, get it removed, they will reach out to us. And if you do it enough to a certain amount of people in that age bracket, you’re probably, you’re increasing your likelihood more that they’re going to reach out to these scammers and then the scammers will be able to take advantage of them.

Beau: It is just a sales lead. They’re just doing lead generation.

Brianne: Yeah.

Beau: That’s all they’re doing, except they’re not selling anything. They’re taking. Tony’s story is a painful reminder of how easily a consumer-unfriendly system can be weaponized by scammers. Tony was desperate to get his Facebook account back, his digital lifeline to his band, his community, his friends, after it was game by hackers and disabled. That desperation combined with a sponsored ad, in this case, a completely spurious, adulterating, fraudulent, sociopath-generated ad, for Meta/Facebook support. Doesn’t exist. Served up by Mammon Incorporated, AKA Google. Led him straight into the hands of a scammer. In Google’s defense, they are cracking down on this sort of thing. Alright, so Tony is taken for nearly five grand because he was a trusting person looking for a solution to a very real problem. The key takeaway here, as Tony’s daughter Brianne put it, is a sad one. The golden rule does not exist online. You have to cultivate paranoia. You have to be impolite mean, even mean. If a customer service agent asks you to download an app, share photos of your ID, make financial transactions to quote unquote “verify your identity,” just hang the [BLEEP] up. It doesn’t matter how desperate you are. I don’t care. Hang up. The responsibility for this doesn’t fall only on the victim. This scam was a direct result of two things, right? First Meta’s decision not to provide an effective account recovery system for its users. And second. Google’s hopefully permanently past failure to adequately police its sponsored search results, which turned an ad into a lead for scamming people. The takeaway: pause, do nothing. Go for a walk. Think about it for a week. Move on. Really. Like, the only thing that comes of taking action when you’re scammed is getting further scammed and losing time. That’s it. You know, game over. War’s over. You lost. Can’t win ’em all. All right. Sorry. Listen. You can win ’em all if you pause. And now it’s time for a tinfoil swan, our paranoid takeaway to keep you safe on and offline. Desperation is the theme. It’s commodified by scammers. When a heavy user of social media loses their account, they lose their community, their memories. It creates a vacuum. And what fills that vacuum? Jerks. Louts. Bullies. Butchers. Cachinnating cockatoos. They don’t have to break down the door because Meta leaves it wide open for them. Remember the equation, people. No human-assisted support + sponsored search ads = a dragnet for scammers. You wanna stay safe? Treat every customer support number that you find on Google like a live wire in a puddle. Don’t go anywhere near it, don’t trust it. And for goodness sake, don’t throw your driver’s license or your passport or your retirement money at it, okay? Assume that out there in the digital ether, the only people who want to talk to you on the phone about your missing social media account are the people who want to empty your pockets. That’s it for this week’s episode of What The Hack. Thanks for listening. See you next week. What the Hack’s brought to you by DeleteMe. DeleteMe makes it quick and easy and safe to remove your personal data online and was recently named the #1 pick by New York Times’ Wirecutter for personal information removal. You can learn more if you go to joindeleteme.com/wth. That’s joindeleteme.com/wth, and if you go there now, you will be able to get a free scan, so go check it out. That’s joindeleteme.com/wth. Do the free scan. It will tell you exactly what’s out there and then you can decide what you want to do next. Stay safe out there. Thanks for listening.

Learn more: 

• See where your data is exposed with our free scan.
• Read Meta’s guide to avoiding other scams on the platform besides the Facebook customer service scam.
• Find out whether the sites you’re visiting are scams