Fraud Alert! "Verified Page" Facebook Phishing Scam

Dear CWS Customers,

Within the last few weeks there have been a few instances of Business Facebook pages being hijacked by Phishers. Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire personal information such as usernames, passwords, or in this instance, to Facebook pages, by pretending the phisher is a trustworthy business or entity.

In this case, the phishing ploy is to gain access to your Facebook page, claim to “verify” your page, and delete all other administrators to the page. Phishers will than either hold your page for ransom, post untrustworthy or inappropriate updates, or sell your page to the highest bidder.

The notification looks like this:

If you see this request, “Decline” their access immediately!

The most recent document case was the Facebook page; Freshome. With over 1.2 million followers, Freshome was locked out of their page for days until Facebook was able to take over and transfer access back to Freshome.

It seems similar phishers have used different names to gain access to hundreds of business pages. Watch out for names like: Page Verified, Page Verifier, and Page Vérifiée.

CWS is unable to reestablish admin statuses if this attack is successful. If you believe your page may have been phished, please contact Facebook Help immediately to regain access to your account.

If you have any questions, please email us.

Sincerely,

Ethan W. Herber
Social Media/Marketing Specialist