{"id":322029,"date":"2026-05-19T00:45:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T00:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/322029\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T00:45:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T00:45:37","slug":"facebook-is-the-top-social-media-platform-for-scam-initiations-says-new-ftc-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/322029\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook is the top social media platform for scam initiations, says new FTC report"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A new report from the Federal Trade Commission<\/a> shows almost 30% of people who lost money to scams last year said it all started on social media.<\/p>\n

Social media was the number-one method of communication for scammers, producing more losses than texts, calls or emails.<\/p>\n

In all, consumers lost $2.1 billion — eight times more than the amount lost in 2020.<\/p>\n

Of the social media platforms, Facebook was the top site for scam initiation. WhatsApp and Instagram came in a distant second and third.<\/p>\n

The FTC advises users to limit how public their social media profile is — encouraging people to make more of their personal information private — or only visible to known friends.<\/p>\n

RELATED: SF retiree loses $500K life savings to pig butcher scam despite warnings from family, friends<\/a><\/p>\n

The FTC also says never let someone you’ve only ever met on social media influence what you do with your money, including where to invest it. Investment scams led to $1.1 billion of last year’s reported losses.<\/p>\n

And finally, if you see an advertisement on social media for a product you’d like to buy, Google the company name or reverse image search the product.<\/p>\n

Remember — only buy from websites you know and trust. Shopping scams account for 40% of people who lost money to a scam on social media.<\/p>\n

Take a look at more stories and videos by 7 On Your Side.<\/a><\/p>\n

7OYS’s consumer hotline is a free consumer mediation service for those in the San Francisco Bay Area. We assist individuals with consumer-related issues; we cannot assist on cases between businesses, or cases involving family law, criminal matters, landlord\/tenant disputes, labor issues, or medical issues. Please review our FAQ here<\/a>. As a part of our process in assisting you, it is necessary that we contact the company \/ agency you are writing about. If we believe we can be of assistance, we will reach back out in response.<\/p>\n

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Copyright \u00a9 2026 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A new report from the Federal Trade Commission shows almost 30% of people who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[134147,37038,37039,12646,2821,24832,3130,93358,7644,3412,4263,101,103,102,28489,104,106,105,4568,37040,47433],"class_list":["post-322029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-134147","tag-7-on-your-side","tag-7oys","tag-consumer-news","tag-facebook","tag-federal-trade-commission","tag-fraud","tag-ftc","tag-instagram","tag-meta","tag-money","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-scams","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-social-media","tag-stephanie-sierra","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}