Sally Cronin is running a wonderful new series at her Smorgasbord Blog Magazine dubbed, ‘Lucky Dip’. Sally peeks into posts from the past on blogs and chooses one to feature. She recently chose and featured an older post by me, warning people how not to get scammed on social media.

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Since this series began in January 2018 there have been over 1000 Posts from Your Archives where bloggers have taken the opportunity to share posts to a new audience… mine.

The topics have ranged from travel, childhood, recipes, history, family and the most recent series was #PotLuck where I shared a random selection of different topics. This series is along the same lines… but is a ‘Lucky Dip’

In this series I will be sharing posts from the half of 2022

It is an opportunity to showcase your writing skill to my readers and also to share on my social media. Which combined is around the 50,000 mark. If you are an author your books will be mentioned too, along with their buy links and your other social media contacts. You can find out how to participate at the end of the post.

Today author D.G. Kaye shares her thoughts on those that prey on others on social media, and in particular those going through the very difficult process of grieving.

What’s Up With #Scammers who Prey on #SocialMedia

As many of you know, I lost my husband just over a year ago. For me and my grief, it may as well be yesterday because the excruciating pain of missing the love of your life doesn’t go away. I thought I’d just post this reminder because it’s truly astounding that predators lurk everywhere seeking out vulnerable people.

Since my husband’s passing, and much of it spent in Covid seclusion at the worst time of one’s life, I had turned to joining some online grief groups. I felt it may be a place I can be with like-minded people and those who’ve walked the walk, those who know how painful grief is, and that they may be places of comfortable harbor for me sometimes. But sadly, the amount of men who wangle their way into these groups hoping to seek out the vulnerable, seems to be ever-growing.

Personally speaking, these groups do not help me at all, yet, I continue to pop in for some words of solace. But because I consider myself a great Facebook ‘FBI’ profiler, I always click on the pages of those stalkers who continually message or leave messages in replies to my comments. Almost all of them seem to have lonely pages with barely a post, as though they specifically joined FB to lurk and lure.

I get many requests, compliments, and sweet nothings from plenty of lunatics on FB, but these grief pages top the charts with lurkers. These places are like a magnet for loveless losers to prey. How many times on the news are we warned about scammers, yet, so many still get caught in this web. It’s up to us all to do our due diligence and check out first, who we think we are friending and allowing into our personal circles. And I might add, the people who run these delicate group pages should also be more diligent when screening applicants who join these groups. It only takes me a moment to figure out many profiles are bogus, bots or that they have ill intentions. Why can’t a moderator do the same?

I’m a moderator in four different FB groups, and every time I get a request from someone who wants to join one of my groups, I take the time to visit the applicant’s page and schmooze around to see what they post, what they do, their ‘about’ page, and decide if they fit into my group. If all the prerequisites aren’t met, I don’t admit them. . . Please visit Sally’s post to continue reading by clicking the link below

Source: Smorgasbord Posts from Your Archives 2022- ‘Lucky Dip’ – #Scammers #SocialMedia by D.G. Kaye | Smorgasbord Blog Magazine

©DGKaye2022