That is the age-old question, “why do people want to purchase fanpages?”. If you a lucky owner of a large Facebook fanpage this article is for you. Most people who amounted a large following abandon their properties after a few years, mainly due to lack of interest. Fanpages have been around for a while, and their novelty has worn off. Current Facebook users aren’t too keen on liking a page just because the title is funny. Many fanpage owners revisit their fanpages, only to find it active again. But wait, why so many comments? Are your fans patiently waiting for you to start posting again? Nope. All those messages and comments come from thousands of marketers / website owners (and con artists) from across the globe.  Virtually all abandoned fanpages are now a cesspool of spam messages, usually in the form of comments or direct messages. Take a look at the image below, does it look familiar?

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All these comments are recent, as seen from the post dates. However, these comments are being posted on 4-5 year old status updates. Seeing them for the first time usually brings excitement, because it looks like you may have struck a gold mine. Kelly Harrison, the person who commented on the image above, dropped a whopping 89,000 USD offer! Wooo hoooo, time to go shopping, right? Wrong. If you actually believe that anyone would pay nearly one hundred grand for a Facebook fanpage then we have a bridge in New York city we would like to sell to you. So who is this Kelly Harrison? Where does she have all that money from? Here is her official Facebook profile, looks quite normal, right? Her profile says that she is 18 years old and currently employed by facebook. Does that sound like someone who would have 90k to drop on a page? Not to us. I know, I know, you’re still sceptical. I mean facebook employees must earn well, right? Perhaps, however take another look at her profile. It features no friend activity, only photos and likes from people across the globe. Why? Because this is a fake account. Yes, you won’t get paid 100k, unfortunately this is a con artist who is trying to lure you in with a promise of a large payday. Go ahead and check yourselves, you will find that most of these accounts that try to contact you are fake. These accounts are easily spotted, and you can spot them too if you see any of the following hints:

  1. Account has very few friends, and if they do have friends they are from all across the globe.
  2. The account has very few shares / comments / likes. Likes are easy to fake, so don’t go by likes alone. Real friends share and comment on each other’s photos. Now most con artists have gotten clever and begun making comments under status updates. Again, they’re easy to spot, as most of them are very generic comments such as: “wow,” “beautiful,” “you’re pretty,” etc…
  3. If you happen to establish contact with the person, you can spot them easily by the way they talk / type. Most of the time they will speak English very poorly. Why? Mainly because most of the scammers are based in India / Pakistan / China / Egypt / Nigeria. Yeah, that young teenager you’re talking to is actually someone else.
  4. If you still decided to bite the hook you will notice how pushy the person will become. They will want access to the page first, no matter what. Don’t ever fall for that, and never give up the page until you have the money secured.

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Is it possible that all these people are scammers? What kind of world are we living in?

We live in a world where a social media account can be worth a few hundred dollars, so naturally, people with lesser means will try to do anything they can to get one for free. Why? So they can sell it and pay their bills. Life is a struggle, and most of those people live in countries with lesser opportunities, with a little persistence they eventually find an easy prey to steal from. Don’t be another victim, make sure to check out the person you’re dealing with.

Easy ways to detect a fraud is:

  1. Ask for their phone number. Most scammers will not do that, in order not to reveal their phone numbers.
  2. If you’re chatting to a female profile expect to talk to a female, if the person agrees to a phone call. Why? Because most of the time the person behind that account will be a male, so naturally if you’re chatting with a female account the scammer has a huge problem. They will try to get around this by telling you: “I don’t talk to customers, but my boss will call you.” Don’t fall for it.
  3. Ask for a Skype / video session. This is probably the best way to detect scammers, because people who use fake accounts simply cannot fulfill this request.

To recap, your page is worth a couple of bucks, and thousands of people are aware of that. They will do anything to get your page for free, especially offer you ungodly amounts of money. Remember, those offers are there to catch your attention, mainly so you talk to them. Because once they get your profile they will keep nagging you every day, with hopes of finally convincing you to give up the page.

Stay safe!