Dangerous products, cryptocurrency scams, so-called “wellness coaches”… On social media, influencers swarm with scams of all kinds.
The mechanics of these systems is at the center of the news with the lawsuit filed by Booba against Magali Berdah, the woman at the head of the controversial influencers agency Shauna Events. In particular, she is accused of allowing dishonest or even illegal practices to take place, in which the influencers she employs promote dangerous and misleading products and services.
If, in social networks, these scams are legion, there are still some good practices to avoid, detect and report them.
On the web, in general, anything that seems easy and interesting rarely is. An investment proposal in a cryptocurrency that makes hundreds, thousands of euros mirobolize in a few weeks, just by registering somewhere? a slimming product that guarantees to melt the kilos in a few days? They are probably mirages. Most attractive offers will become, at best, a mere smokescreen, at worst, a debt or a health hazard.
• Avoid certain product categories
Some products are not made to be bought on social networks. This is particularly the case for medical products, hygiene products, food supplements: without a guarantee, they are very likely to be useless, even harmful to health, as well as being expensive.
We also avoid anything related to finance, such as trading, lotteries or attractive games of chance. There are many offering so-called “gold deals” in these areas, such as reality TV candidate Julien Bert, who launched a passive trading platform promising millions that turned out to be smoke.
Some influencers practice “dropshipping”: this consists of reselling a product that you buy for a handful of euros on e-commerce sites at a higher price.
In addition to charging an unreasonably high price, this scam often involves poor quality products. To avoid finding one of these products, a Google reverse image search can help. In this way, we can see if this same product is sold on other sites and, above all, at what price. In the same way, comparing the product with similar ones can give clues: Bluetooth headphones at 15 euros are not a guarantee of quality.
• Check that the publication bears the mention “sponsored”
To avoid dishonest practices – here, hidden advertising, influencers must put the mention “sponsored” in the posts that promote a product or service. In particular, it was the focus of a fine imposed on influencer Nabilla Benattia in 2019 when she had promoted business training on Snapchat without warning her subscribers that she was being paid to do so.
• Verify the identity of the seller
A quick scan of an e-commerce site’s legal notices can also help ensure that its services are compliant. Most malicious, dropshipping or simply scamming sites (selling a non-existent product) use front sites, whose domain names are recycled to the extreme.
Numerama, for example, investigated a fake bike dealer and recovered the domain name of a site that previously sold argan oil and honey. Taking advantage of the notoriety of the site, the criminal made the victims pay for bicycles without even sending them the product in return.
• Read comments
To ensure the good faith of a proposal, testimonials from former customers, opinions of people who have recently purchased the product or used the service. Be careful though, some dishonest companies use fake reviews to get their product validated by the general public.
If in doubt, you can review some comments to make sure they are real people behind the accounts, and not accounts created very recently or just posting comments intended to praise various and varied products.
Source: BFM TV
