Jen Gunter Instagram – Last week I got caught in a Facebook phishing scam. I will put this link for this in my bio. It was very elaborate and involved and took weeks, and it is happening to lots of people so I want to help raise awareness! I received an email request to be on a podcast with someone in the wellness space. They were UK based and it was a typical kind of request I receive. I asked my UK publisher if this was a legitimate podcast and they said yes and they thought it would be a good fit for me. They said this would be a Facebook live event. I had done a few before, so I said sure. I did not check to see if this creator did Facebook lives, but of course never occurred to me it was a scam. They set up a zoom to get my Facebook set for the live. It sounded very legit. I have had to do these kinds of calls to set up software (or whatever) before big live events before. The guy on the zoom had me change some Facebook settings that didn’t seem weird because I never use my Facebook business account. And then he pressured me to take a final step, which I refused to do as it made no sense. He wanted me to change my email for the Facebook to a different email of mine. It sounded innocuous, and he had concocted a plausible reason, but it made no sense and so I said no. And then I was suspicious. The next day I saw several posts on Threads about an identical scam. Weeks in the making for each person, and tailored for that person’s area. The scammers had partial control on my Facebook, the business part, but not of the actual account so they couldn’t kick me out. Not doing that final step saved me from losing the page altogether. As I had no credit cards saved, they couldn’t post ads (which is what I think the scam is about, but seriously, it seems a lot of work for that). I got my Facebook account back because I paid for Meta verified and worked with them and someone who works at Facebook follows me and they reached out. Anyway…be wary of Facebook live requests! And sadly, going forward, I am going to have to vet every podcast request to make sure it’s not the next elaborate scam.