You good-hearted people are really being taken advantage of right now.

Been Here, Done That

Certain scams cycle over and over. For instance, I get lots of email warnings, lost packages, and "urgent attention" types of things in my inbox. Fortunately for me, I have a fake-y radio name so I instantly know that the message is a scam (I believe it's perfectly logical that anything that required my attention would at the very least be addressed to my real name).

How They Sucker You

We all have our little social media bubbles. For instance, if you click on one wrestling story, you'll soon have a feed populated with a ton of wrestling stories. Since I have a bunch of animal-lover friends and organizations, I get tons of animal-related content. This is where one of the biggest scams is now taking place.

The Scam

You may have seen various pictures of supposedly lost or wounded pets. They frequently come from places that sound semi-official, and in some cases are being passed along by organizations that are involved in pet rescue type organizations. They are usually "urgent pleas" to find the owners.

The Tell

In poker, they have "tells". For instance, maybe a player always takes a drink when they have a really bad hand. With these Facebook scam posts the "tell" is, the word "bump". All of these posts currently use the word "bump" to try to get you to pass it along. This is there way of trying to circumvent protections in the Facebook algorithm when you use the word "share".  One problem, neither me nor anyone amongst my 5,000 Facebook fans ever says, "Bump this for me".

It Does Hurt

It's easy to say "It doesn't hurt" to pass along these posts "just in case". There are two problems with that thinking. #1. The post you pass along will eventually be replaced with something else, which was the scammer's intention all along, and #2. It keeps legitimate posts from being passed along.  So one more time, if something says, "bump", just know it's a scam. I've included a couple of examples below.