Social media can be confusing and there are plenty of scammers out there who want to take advantage of unsuspecting people.  One common “phishing scam” is to create an account with the picture of a celebrity and pass it off as being that particular celebrity’s personal social media account.

Scammers know that people who comment on those pages as though the celebrity is reading the comments are good targets for a scam.  They will often begin a private message with the person who commented and invariably will either ask for money or for personal information so that they can access someone’s personal bank account.

So how do you know the difference?  First, most celebrities have someone on their staff that manages their social media accounts.  While they may be the one posting the content you see, more often than not, it is not them, but a trusted employee.  Secondly, almost NO celebrity is going to initiate a private chat with someone they don’t know.

Also, most celebrities are not going to post something that says something like: ” Can I get 50 hello’s from my lovely and amazing fans ,if my music has ever made you happy…”.  That’s a post from a Hank Williams, Jr. “fan page” passing itself off as being Bocephus himself.  A quick look at the page shows it is full of spelling and capitalization mistakes (even in the name of the page itself) and the post came from an overseas Facebook account.  Besides, does that even sound like something Hank, Jr. would say?

Perhaps the best way to tell is to look for the “blue check mark”.

Here’s what Facebook has to say: