Facebook can be a great tool for people to stay connected with their friends, family, and co-workers, but it also brings things like scammers using the site as a way to prey on unsuspecting users. 

Denise Sobol-Geremia is the administrator of Strathmore's biggest Facebook group, 'I love Strathmore' which has more than 14.1k followers; with the growth and engagement of the page it makes it a perfect breeding ground for scammers, especially with the Strathmore Stampede being only three days away. A popular scam at the moment is scammers claiming to sell tickets, or sometimes even pretending to want to buy tickets.

Geremia tries her hardest to sift through the requests to join the group and determine what is a real Strathmore account and what is a fake account but sometimes these scammers slip through her hands.

"Some of these accounts say they live in the United States, Egypt, or India, and then I look at their postal code and it is always the same one. It's like they just googled what postal code to use but sometimes I miss these types of accounts because the account will have a mutual friend, has the correct postal code, and says they live in Strathmore, I've approved people like that but then they start commenting scams."

In the event that Geremia may have missed a scam account, she took it upon herself to make a post on the page and warn her users of what to look out for so they won't be taken advantage of.

  1. Do they have no mutual friends?

  2. If you check their profile, did they just create a profile?

  3. Do they have a stock photo as their profile photo? Or no photo as their profile photo? Same with a banner image?

  4. Are they asking for a wire transfer or gift card as payment?

  5. Are they asking for an e-transfer to an address that seems fishy?

With so many different types of scammers out there Geremia wants everyone who uses her page to be mindful and just back away if something doesn't feel right. Geremia says that it is important to her that she protects her users from getting taken for a ride.

"I feel like I know everybody in Strathmore and I have a relationship with so many people that if someone got taken, especially in my group, I would feel really responsible. It might not be my responsibility to keep people safe on Facebook but I just know that everyone is already having a tough time as is right now and they don't need to be dealing with scams." 

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