Meta Sounds Pre-Holiday Alarm as Scam Incidents Jump 56%

Meta has launched a pre-holiday anti-scam awareness campaign to keep users safe.

“Scammers are persistent and try to trick people in a variety of ways — malicious texts and emails, websites impersonating known brands, posts on social media, visual discovery platforms and discussion forums, and more,” the tech giant wrote on its blog Tuesday (Dec. 10).

With that in mind, Meta is warning users about types of scams to look out for. For example, Meta said it has disrupted scammers offering people in the U.S., India and the U.K. fake coupons and gift cards in an attempt to dupe them into turning over personal information.

In another instance, the company stopped a scam in which fraudsters tried to trick people into paying for non-existent Christmas decorations, offered at extremely low prices.

The company is advising users to be on the alert for phishing emails and texts, which could come from an address or number posing a known brand or even a person’s financial institution (FI).

Meta also said that consumers should avoid sharing personal information and to beware when paying online, as scammers could get them to “pay upfront or use peer-to-peer payments that cannot be reversed.”

Meta’s warning comes at the end of a year in which scams became the leading form of fraud, surpassing digital payment fraud.

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows that the share of scam-related fraud increased by 56%, and financial losses from scams jumped 121%.

Scams now make up 23% of all fraudulent transactions, with relationship/trust and product/service scams leading to the most losses. These scams manipulate people into authorizing fraudulent transactions, in many cases employing deceptive tactics. In addition, fraud involving compromised credentials, where individuals are duped into revealing account details, has also been increasing.

“The increase in scams over digital payment fraud illustrates the changing strategies of fraudsters, who now exploit vulnerabilities in human behavior instead of targeting technical flaws in digital payment systems,” PYMNTS wrote Tuesday. “As a result, FIs face greater challenges in managing fraud, with scams growing in frequency and sophistication.”

Digital payment fraud actually declined in terms of dollar losses this year, falling 57% this year. Fraudsters, PYMNTS wrote last month, now rely on the “customer-centric” tactics involved in social engineering scams, exploiting trust to bypass the robust security systems FIs have constructed around digital payments.