Part of getting serious about marketing as an artist is running Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns. For a relatively small fee you can get your music in front of tens of millions of potential fans, and if you are patient, consistent, and committed to improving your social media content game, Facebook ads can pay off big time.
However, anyone with a Facebook business page has to deal with tons of spammers and scammers. These people use bots to crawl Facebook and message business page owners – normally either through the Message function on their page, or by replying directly to a page ad – with the eventual goal of separating as many of those page owners as possible from their money and/or pages.
A Messenger inbox full of scams is part of having a Facebook business page, and part of running Meta ad campaigns. It’s the way it is. Surefire solutions are not an option. Your only options are:
- trying a bunch of solutions that don’t work
- taking note of the tips that minimize the risk these messages pose to you.
Table of Contents
Facebook Scam Solutions That Don’t Work
Reporting Accounts
Upon getting a eyeful of the swamp of scams proliferating on Facebook, some artists opt to completely ignore their Messenger inbox – which is actually not a terrible idea. Others decide to fight, and spend an hour a day working on clicking ‘block’ and ‘spam’ on each message when all they’re effectively doing is working on a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome. Try to be a hero and report each spam account – 26,576 more will message you tomorrow.
Block Scammy Countries
Facebook has a function that allows pages to completely block entire countries from being able to even view their page, let alone message the page. The problem with this approach is that you’d have to block almost the entire world to eliminate spam and scammers from your page. You could block countries like India, Bangladesh and Nepal, which account for a huge share of Facebook scammers and a small share of fans of Western music that can be monetized in any significant sense, but that still leaves tons of countries that contain not only loads of scammers but loads of potential real fans. Assuming your goal is to become world-famous, you’ll look like a mighty unusual superstar if swaths of the world’s population cannot see you on Facebook.
Not Advertising On Facebook
Some artists decide to deal with this problem by not advertising their music on Facebook at all. The problem here is twofold.
- Scammers will ultimately find your Facebook business page, whether or not you advertise.
- You’re trying to have a music career, and not advertising on a platform with 3 billion active monthly users because you don’t want to deal with several weird messages a day is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
The fact is, once you know the scams and you take the necessary steps to tighten up your security, spammers and scammers will not be a problem for you. You just need to know what to watch out for.
Popular Facebook Scams To Watch Out For
‘Your Page Is At Risk Of Being Suspended’
This is far and away the most common Facebook scam at the moment. You’ll typically receive a message from an account with a very World War I-era name which scammers harvested off some obituary website, telling you in very AI-generated English that your page is at risk of being suspended or deleted for some weird violation, along with a link that the user demands you click immediately if you don’t want your page to disappear in a puff of smoke. Click links like these if you want your page to disappear in a puff of smoke.
The Facebook Live Scam a.k.a. the Tony Terry Special
This one gets ugly. You’ll receive a message, sometimes even an email, from someone praising your artistry and inviting you as featured guest in a Facebook Live discussion with a celebrity – most commonly ’80s R&B singer Tony Terry, for some reason – for which you will be paid a couple thousand dollars. The name of the song or album in your discography that inspired them to reach out to you with this amazing offer is not disclosed. Why Tony Terry or anyone else wants to talk to you, never mind pay you thousands of dollars for the privilege, they do not explain. What they will explain exhaustively is how badly they need to do a screen-sharing session with you, supposedly in order to ‘adjust your channel’s permissions so the Facebook Live session will run smoothly’. In point of fact, they hope to use a screen-sharing session to take over your Facebook business page, remove you as administrator, and convert it into a page peddling cosmetics, Russian disinformation or something else exciting. A Google search will give you tons of information on the Tony Terry scam.
‘Hello Bro Pay Me $40 To Make You Famous’
These accounts typically have a South Asian person’s name, and a profile picture of a man in a cheap suit. The message will normally begin with ‘hi bro’, ‘hello respectable sir’ or maybe ‘hey fam’ for that urban touch. They will present themselves as social media marketing experts, and ask you to pay them so they can increase your popularity on Youtube, Facebook, Spotify, etc. They will be spectacularly cheap, and the reason they will be spectacularly cheap is because they will give you fake views and fake streams that may get your music removed from Spotify and/or Youtube. If that’s all that happens, you got off lucky. What can also happen is: they ask you for manager access to your page in order to “run your promotional campaign”, you hand that over, they kick you off your own page, you know the rest. They can also do this to your Youtube channel as easily as your Facebook page.
The Good Old Password Hack
This one never goes out of style. Apparently men are on the moon, but one of the world’s richest companies still hasn’t figured out how to stop people from entering a zillion passwords into a login screen until one works. Or maybe Meta has figured out how to block that, and today people are getting hacked mostly because so many of us still insist on clicking sus links and entering our passwords in the sus websites they send us to. Either way, this trick is still alive and well.
Good Old Begging – The Cyber Version
The Internet and the streets aren’t too different. Some people have a solid hustle, and other people have no hustle beyond straight up begging for money. These guys normally use bots to click on business pages’ ‘Send Message’ buttons, then click on any of the default questions available in the chat screen. The question itself isn’t important. What’s important is that you reply, at which point they start scheming on whatever angle they think looks juiciest, which quite often is just begging for you to send them money.
How To Avoid Facebook Scams
Block Any DMs Claiming To Be From Meta
Meta will never message you via Facebook Messenger or Instagram DMs.
Say it with me.
If Meta has a problem with your page, they will email you. They will never, ever send you a Facebook Messenger or Instagram DM message. Absolutely any account that sends you a message saying your page is at risk of suspension or deletion is a scam. Period.
Never Click On Facebook Messenger Links From People You Don’t Know
Hell, try your best not to click on Messenger links from people you do know. If you must, do so on your phone and not your laptop, and for the love of God…
Only Enter Your Facebook Password On Pages That End In ‘facebook.com’
One way to avoid Facebook scams is to always, always make sure the URL of any page asking you to enter your password actually contains ‘facebook.com/’. If it does not, do not enter any information in that page, and close it immediately. It is a fake page that has been created to steal login information.
Only Reply To Meta Support Email Addresses That End In ‘@facebook.com’
Similarly, another way to avoid Facebook scams is to closely examine the actual email address of anyone sending you an email claiming to be from Facebook. If their email address does not end in ‘@facebook.com’, it is likely fake.
Never Grant Admin Access To Anyone
Hiring a marketer? That only requires you to grant that marketer Advertiser access to your page. Hiring a manager? Editor access should be quite sufficient. Anyone with Admin access to your page can remove Admin access for anyone else with Admin access – even the person who create the page in the first place. Nobody needs Admin access except you. Learn more about Facebook access roles here.
Never Do A Screen-Sharing Session With Anyone Who Requires One
Real marketers don’t need a screen-sharing session with you in order to request Advertiser access to your page. People can easily send you a request for Advertiser access, no screen-share required. Anyone who harps on about how badly they need a screen-share session with you only wants one so that during the course of that session they can get the information they need to take over your page and kick you off. Avoid Facebook scams by blocking these kinds of characters immediately.
Be Extremely Suspicious Of Official Messages With Bad Spelling Or Grammar
When your friends use bad spelling and grammar in their messages, that’s just a reflection on your poor choice of friends. When people supposedly representing Facebook misspell words like ‘Facebook’ and use all caps, weird fonts or multiple exclamation marks at the end of sentences, they are telling you they are not who they say they are.
Be Extremely Suspicious Of Strangers Offering You Lots Of Money
This one is just good life advice in general. If you’re Snoop Dogg, you can reasonably expect a steady stream of people tripping over themselves to hand you bags of cash. But if you have 812 Facebook followers, ask yourself honestly why someone would want to give you $2,000 to talk with them on Facebook Live, and treat that person accordingly.
Mute Message Notifications From Your Facebook Business Page
That is, unless being woken up several times a night to spam notifications is something you enjoy. Learn how to mute message notifications from your Facebook Business Page here.
Set Up 2-Factor Authentication On Your Account Right Now
Like, right now. Learn more about Facebook 2-factor authentication here.