Fraudsters are targeting small businesses on Facebook

Which? has found multiple phoney profiles on Facebook that purport to be from Facebook and its parent company Meta.

Scammers impersonating Facebook are sending direct messages telling business page owners that their pages will be deleted for infringing Facebook's trademark rights.

Read on to discover how this scam works, how to avoid it and how to report it. 

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Scam Facebook messages

The message tells you that 'your Facebook page is scheduled for permanent deletion due to a post that infringed upon Facebook’s trademark rights'.

It then goes on to invite you to ‘file a complaint seeking the reinstatement of your page prior to its removal from Facebook’ if you think there’s been a misunderstanding. 

The message also says: ‘We understand that this situation may impact your ongoing business operations. However, please be informed that if we do not receive a complaint from you, our decision will be final.’ 

We know of at least 10 fake profiles that are sending these scam messages.

The messages we have seen are being sent from:

• Compliance Implementation Team
• Meta Page Support
• Compliance Department
• Brand Content
• Security Authentication Group
• Compliance Management
• Our Terms of Service
• Meta Business Support
• Meta Business Suite Support
• Meta Pay Support

None of these are official Meta – the owner of Facebook – or Facebook pages. 

Dodgy websites

We always recommend that you never click on suspicious links sent in messages like these, but for the purpose of this research we clicked the link to see how this scam works. 

The link led to a website impersonating Meta. It even contained a genuine link to Meta’s privacy policy, to provide an element of authenticity. 

When we clicked ‘Request of Review’, we were taken to another webpage where we were asked for our details. The page titled ‘Intellectual property violation’ asked for our name, email address, phone number and why we were appealing the policy violation. 

It's unclear exactly what scammers intend to do with these details, but fraudsters often use intel gathered on you to engineer a scam and target you at a later date or to access your online accounts.

We shared our findings with Meta and it confirmed that this is a scam.

Reporting Facebook scams

To report a scam group, page or profile on Facebook, select the three dots on the right-hand side of the page and click ‘report’. 

You can report scam websites to the National Cyber Security Centre on its website.

If you think you/ve been scammed, call your bank immediately using the number on the back of your bank card and report it to Action Fraud or call the police on 101 if you live in Scotland.