Too good to be true? Social media scams are on the rise – Marketplace

If you scroll Instagram, chances are you see a lot of tempting ads. For Miriam Nunberg, an education lawyer in New York City, the one she fell for showed a skirt with colorful birds for less than $30. “It looked really pretty in the ad, and I don’t normally buy things online,” she said, while her son shouted: “That’s not true at all!” When the skirt arrived, she realized it was totally different than it looked in the ad. “The fabric is this stiff, thick polyester that doesn’t feel good, and it’s very clammy when you wear it,” Nunberg said. The prints of the birds were blurry, and the packaging was in a different language. “I have no idea how to return this, because I can’t even read the return address,” she said. So, she couldn’t get her money back. Consumers lost more than $1 billion to fraud on social media in the first six months of this year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. That’s almost ten times what it was five years ago. Consumers have little protection from these Insta-scams, said Rachel Tobac, the CEO of SocialProof Security, a cybersecurity company. “All social media companies have a long
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