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Joe Caruso was excited about the message he received on Instagram last October. Caruso, 60, a business consultant in Washington, D.C., who moonlights as a musician, shared one of his original songs on Instagram and received several direct messages about it. One came from a man who complimented him on his music and asked, “So how long have you been doing this?”
Caruso was wary about responding but felt better after he googled the man’s name and saw that he was an editor at a music magazine. “I went to the website, checked it out, and it’s totally legit,” Caruso recalls.
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The two continued their conversation on Instagram, but for Caruso, something soon felt … off. The editor wanted to profile him for the magazine but didn’t want to talk by phone. He asked Caruso a series of personal questions that seemed unrelated to his music. Then the editor said he needed Caruso to pay $65 to hold a time slot for the interview.
“I’ve worked in digital media, and I’ve never had an editor working for me that asked anyone for money,” Caruso says. “If they did, they’d be fired.”
He re-researched the sender and discovered that his Instagram account had about 250 followers, which seemed low for a 20-year veteran of the music biz. Caruso realized the man was an impostor when he found the real editor’s Instagram account. It had the same profile photo as the fake account but around 35,000 followers.
“I just sat there thinking, I’m such an idiot,” Caruso says. “I came so close.”
He avoided having money stolen through the scam, but others aren’t so fortunate. In 2025, scams on social media (particularly Facebook) accounted for more money stolen — about $2.1 billion — than any other contact method used by scammers, according to reports to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Why social media is a hot spot for scams
Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, which focus on personal connections, can feel like safe spaces — but that safety is an illusion.
“Social media is designed for quick reactions and fast scrolling rather than deliberate analysis, so people may respond to a post with little thought,” says scam expert Steve Weisman, who tracks fraud on his site Scamicide.com.
Another problem: “We’ve confused real friends with people we meet online,” says Amy Nofziger, senior director of fraud victim support for the AARP Fraud Watch Network. She manages the network’s helpline, which receives hundreds of calls a week from scam victims. “People say, ‘Well, they’re my friend.’ And I say, ‘Have you ever shaken this person’s hand or hugged them? You’ve never met them? Then they’re not your friend.’ ”
Nofziger adds that online criminals benefit from the people’s “inability to discern harm when [the criminal] is not physically in front of you.”
Scammers can also use the personal information you post on social media against you, the FTC warns. “Scammers may hack a user’s account, exploit what a user posts to figure out how to target them, or buy ads and use the same tools used by real businesses to target people by age, interests, or shopping habits,” the FTC says.
Common scams on social media
Romance scams. About 1 in 10 adults age 50 and older have made a romantic connection online and then were asked to provide financial assistance or invest in cryptocurrency, according to a survey AARP released in February. In 2025, nearly 60 percent of people who reported having money stolen in a romance scam said the relationship started on social media, according to the FTC.
The criminals can make their scam attempts more targeted based on information they pull from social media. You’re in a widows’ group? The scammer (posing as a potential love interest) will sympathize and claim to have lost a spouse as well, for example, to forge a connection.
Romance scam warning signs include:
- Someone pressures you to move the conversation to an unsupervised platform, such as WhatsApp.
- They lavish you with attention and gifts (known as love bombing).
- They offer numerous reasons why they can’t meet face-to-face.
- They ask for money or try to convince you to invest in cryptocurrency.
Investment scams. Of the reported $1.1 billion in losses to investment scams in 2025, more than half occurred on social media, according to the FTC. Among the most prominent are pig butchering scams: Criminals, often based in Southeast Asia, entice you into a relationship, spend weeks or even months building trust, then try to convince you to invest in bogus cryptocurrency schemes.
Sometimes these investment scams start as romance scams, then the criminal will propose a sure-bet investment opportunity.
Warning signs:
- The investment comes with big promises, such as guaranteed returns and minimal risks.
- You’re told to act fast — a common feature of most scams.
- You receive few details about the investment.
- The investment promoter claims to have a secret system for making money.
Fake advertisements. Shopping scams were the most reported type of social media fraud in 2025. Ads can send people to websites for bogus companies or sites that impersonate real brands. Social media platforms have been accused of not doing enough to stop them — and maybe even encouraging them.
The Consumer Federation of America, a nonprofit advocacy group, filed a class action lawsuit against Meta in April 2026, accusing the tech giant of misleading users about the extent of scam advertising on Facebook and Instagram, as well as its efforts to combat it.
The CFA also alleges that the company profited from the ads by charging higher rates to advertisers it identified as higher risk. The complaint cites an internal Meta document that reveals more than 10 percent of the company’s revenue came from high-risk ads.
Social media ads often lead to impulse buying. We’re scrolling, we see a cool product, and all it takes is a few clicks to make a purchase. In a 2023 survey from Bankrate, 48 percent of respondents said they’d made an impulse purchase because of social media — but 68 percent regretted at least one of their purchases.
Warning signs:
- Ads feature products with huge discounts or suspiciously low prices.
- The site claims to sell products that are sold out elsewhere.
- The company charges excessive or unusual fees (such as fees to cover tariffs).
- You’re asked to pay using uncommon methods (such as a wire transfer or gift cards).
Employment scams. Reports of job scams doubled in 2025 from the previous year, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) announced in May. The median loss for victims: $1,000. Some you might find on social media platforms — particularly LinkedIn — are in the form of fake job ads, with fake (but legitimate-sounding) companies; others involve scammers impersonating real companies and employment agencies.
“If you see a job offer on LinkedIn, there’s an automatic assumption that it’s been vetted, and that’s really not the case,” says Michael Sherwood, vice president of product at Malwarebytes, a cybersecurity company that offers free scam and ad blockers.
(LinkedIn and the FBI have teamed up to educate the public about job scams.)
Warning signs:
- You receive an unsolicited job offer.
- A potential employer asks you to pay certain expenses, such as a fee for an interview or upfront costs to begin work.
- A job offer promises great pay for a few hours of working from home.
How to protect yourself
Take note of strange behavior. Why would your aunt ask you for money at midnight through Facebook Messenger? “If a message seems odd, if it seems like something this person wouldn’t do, always verify with them what’s going on,” says Sherwood.
Scrutinize accounts. Some signs that a social media account might be phony: The person has a small number of followers (but follows a lot of people), hasn’t posted much or only recently started the account. Also check the username. Account names with hyphens, periods, extra letters, misspellings, or random numbers can be warning signs.
Beware of speedy, well-crafted replies. Criminals can easily find information about you online and craft a personalized message with tools like ChatGPT. Caruso asked his fake music editor on Instagram, “What did you think of the song?” and received a fast, impressive response. “He sent me a paragraph, within three minutes, and it went into a lot of detail,” he says. “And my friends were all like, ‘You know that was AI, right?’ ”
Avoid online ads. Sherwood has a simple policy about ads on social media. “Don’t interact with any of them,” he says. “Even if it is a legitimate advertiser, it might grab your email and phone number, and that gets sold to a third party.” Go directly to your favorite online store’s website to purchase something.
Search for scams. If you’re determined to buy a product from an ad on social media, search the company’s name with keywords such as “scam” or “complaint.” Likewise, with employment ads, research the job posting on the company’s website to make sure it’s real.
Don’t overshare. Yes, you should change your privacy settings from public to private so only your friends can see your posts. But that may not stop strangers from viewing your vacation photos or reading a post about your late spouse — information scammers can use to create targeted pitches.
Sherwood has confronted his parents about this. “They share pictures of my kids, and I keep telling them, Don’t put it out there,” he says. “They’ll say, ‘Well, it’s just my close friends,’ but what if those close friends have been hacked? What if they have an easy password that’s been shared? What if they haven’t turned on two-factor authentication?”
Report social media scams. Law enforcement and government agencies need to know what you’ve experienced. If you experience a scam on social media, report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3.gov). You can also file a complaint with the BBB.
LinkedIn has an online form for reporting scams, and Meta has a Scam Protection Center where you can report fraud on Facebook and Instagram. (Find out more about reporting social media scams here.)
Call the free AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360 for assistance and support.
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