The Sedan police Department is warning the public about fake missing person and missing pets scams.

 

 These scams often appear on social media and encourage users to report them. Then, the scammer changes the original message to one that promotes a property rental, sale, or survey link that appears to be endorsed by the person who shared it.

 

The scams are designed to play on the emotions of viewers and are often posted in local buy and sell groups, where a sense of community and trust exists.

 

BBB offers these tips to avoid being scammed by these bait-and-switch ads:

 

— Do a bit of digging before resharing a post on your profile. Read the information carefully and look at the profile of the person who created and shared the original post. If the profile is from Florida but shared the post in a Tennessee group, it may be a red flag of a bait-and-switch publication.

— Find out when the poster created the Facebook profile. Scammers always create profiles when their old one gets banned. If you click on their profile, it will tell you how long they have been a member of the group. You can also find additional information on their public profile.

 

— You should see it in the news. If a child goes missing or a tragedy occurs, you'll most likely see it on different news outlets or shared by law enforcement, not on a random post.

 

— Do a reverse image search on Google. You can right-click on the photo and use a service like Google Lens to see if the pictures in the post are showing up as being used in other ads or websites in different cities.

 

— Find similar posts. Copy and paste the text from the post into Facebook's search tool to see if other posts with the same text and different pictures show up.

 

Navigating social media in the 21st century is riddled with dangers and pitfalls. Staying informed and being vigilant remains your best protection from any scammer.

 

Alert administrators to fake profiles, compromised accounts and spam messages by reporting them on Facebook and Instagram.