OPINION: Be on alert for social media scammers

If you’re an avid user of TikTok or Facebook — among the most popular social media sites — you no doubt have come across bot accounts.

These are fake accounts that have no humans attached but instead are programmed to carry out certain tasks. When scammers employ them, their goals include: tricking users into buying or investing in something, stealing personal information or even sharing sensitive photos for blackmail purposes.

Facebook removed 1.1 billion accounts in the third quarter of 2024 because they were considered fake, operated by bots or otherwise, according to Statista, a global data platform. TikTok removed 73 million accounts in the first quarter of this year. Here’s how to spot a malicious bot account, courtesy of Scam Detector, a fraud prevention website:

• Look at the account’s username and profile. Consider it a red flag if you find a vague or meaningless generic name with numbers at the end. Also, look for incomplete or empty bios. “Since scammers make a large number of bot accounts, they don’t usually bother to give each one a unique, realistic name,” says Scam Detector.
• Similarly, look at comments posted by the account. Scammers sometimes program bots to leave comments on videos to make them appear legitimate. You’ll find generic phrases or stray emojis that don’t have much to do with the video. Some examples: “Incredible video” or “I could watch this all day.”
• If you end up in direct message conversations with what you presume is another user, it might be a bot if the comments are not responding the way a real person would or if remarks keep turning the conversation back to one subject.

Quitting the gym

The federal government’s lawsuit against LA Fitness raises the question of how to generally protect yourself from subscriptions that are difficult — or nearly impossible — to cancel.

The action last month by the Federal Trade Commission accuses the gym chain of requiring customers who want to cancel their membership to either show up in person or cancel by mail.

Both options are “opaque, complicated, and demanding — far from simple,” the FTC alleges.

The complaint adds that the company doesn’t adequately disclose cancellation procedures during membership sign-ups and that some customers are registered for added services at a recurring charge without realizing there may be different cancellation requirements.

Fitness International, which owns the gym chain, contends the allegations are “without merit” and that it is confident it will win in court.

Before you sign up for a subscription, do this, according to the FTC:

• Read terms and conditions carefully and watch for auto-renewals.
• See what others are saying online by searching the company’s name and words like “complaint,” “problem” or “cancel.”
• If you’ve tried to cancel a subscription and the company continues to charge your account, dispute it with your credit or debit card company. “Just changing your credit or debit card number is often not enough,” the FTC says.