It has been revealed that people are falling victim to a scam through social media giant Facebook, which involves your identity being stolen and used to take out payday loans.
Police have reported cyber crimes such as these taking place from June 2014 to as recent as this month.
The scam can cause significant financial problems for people, including the risk that your credit rating is ruined as a result.
The cyber criminals hack a person’s Facebook account, and post ads on the account’s timeline, posing as the account holder.
Friends of the account holder may then be tempted into taking up the opportunity to get money, and ‘like’ the post, and message the hackers, thinking that they are talking to their friend.
The hackers, still posing as the friend, will request the person’s phone number, before a man calls the victim to provide a choice between two opportunities to make money.
“The first is that he has a business that can obtain Government funding and he can claim money on their behalf and split the fund,” Northumbria police said.
“In the second he states that he has a mobile phone business and requires new phones to sell on.”
The criminal will then request bank details to ‘transfer the victim’s share of the money’, but this money never materialises.
