Warning about the trick of impersonating hospital Facebook pages to defraud charity money

(Dan Tri) - Many scammers have created Facebook pages impersonating major hospitals, posting information about serious illnesses to call for charity. Many people have fallen into the trap of scammers and transferred money.

Impersonating major hospitals to call for charity

According to the feedback of Dan Tri readers and many Facebook users, recently, they often come across advertising content from Facebook pages of many large hospitals such as Bach Mai, Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital, Thu Duc Hospital, Front Fund... to share about serious illnesses and need money for treatment.

The scam article was posted on a Facebook page impersonating Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital (Screenshot taken by reporter).

The content of these articles often mentions serious illnesses of children, with treatment costs up to billions of dong, to appeal to the compassion of the online community, thereby calling for charity.

However, the information of the charity recipient is a personal account number, instead of the official account of the hospital or a social organization or association.

Many people who sympathized with the cases mentioned did not hesitate to transfer money to the account numbers provided in the article, not knowing that these were fake Facebook pages set up by scammers to steal charity money from gullible people.

Many gullible people have transferred money into the scammers' accounts (Screenshot taken by reporter).

Many Facebook users, realizing that these were just pages impersonating major hospitals to appropriate property, commented on the post to warn.

However, these comments were all deleted by the scammer behind the fake Facebook page to continue their activities.

In fact, the trick of impersonating hospital Facebook pages to appropriate property is not new and the hospitals themselves have repeatedly warned the community.

However, many gullible people still fall into the trap of scammers and transfer money to them when they are moved by the fake content posted.

How to identify fake Facebook pages created by scammers

Creating fake Facebook pages is a common trick of scammers. In particular, scammers will pay money to register for services or use tricks to bypass Meta to own the blue tick, the sign of "official" Facebook pages, to increase the level of credibility to easily deceive victims.

Therefore, the account with the blue tick is not always the "official" Facebook account and the content posted on this Facebook page is not always trustworthy, but sometimes the content is posted by scammers to trick users.

To prevent falling victim to scammers on social networks, users can follow these steps to identify fake Facebook pages, even if the Facebook account has a blue tick or a large number of followers.

Check Facebook page transparency

To check the credibility of a Facebook page, users can view information about the transparency of this Facebook page.

To do this, go to the Facebook page you want to check information, click on "About". In the interface that appears, click on "Page Transparency" and click the "See all" button.

In the dialog box that appears, you will see detailed information about the Facebook page, including the date the page was created, any name changes, and a list of the Facebook page's administrators.

If a Facebook page is newly created or frequently changes its name, with unrelated names, it is likely a Facebook page created for scam purposes.

The Facebook page impersonating “Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital” was just renamed from another Facebook page on September 1 to carry out the scam (Screenshot taken by a reporter).

This is because hackers can attack and take over a Facebook page with a large number of followers, then change the page name and attach a blue tick to carry out fraudulent acts.

Additionally, based on the Facebook page admin information, you can also guess whether it is a fake page or not.

For example, Facebook pages with the blue tick of a famous football player or music star abroad, but only have administrators from Vietnam, are almost certainly fake Facebook pages created by Vietnamese people to attract interactions, sell products or scam users.

Conversely, if a Facebook page that often provides information about Vietnam or is named after a famous person in Vietnam, but has a list of administrators abroad, it is almost certain that this will also be a fake Facebook page that tricks users into accessing websites containing malicious code.

After checking the transparency of Facebook pages and noticing suspicious signs, lack of trust... users should absolutely not message or make transactions with these Facebook pages, even if the page has a blue tick or a large number of followers, to avoid becoming a victim of scammers.

Check post interactions on Facebook page

One thing users need to check carefully is the number of interactions with posts on Facebook pages. Many people are often subjective when they see posts calling for charity, introducing products, offering services... with high interactions, many comments in response... so they believe in the content of the post.

However, fake Facebook pages often use tools to artificially increase engagement, including the number of people clicking "Like" or comments on posts.

To check if the interactions on your Facebook page are fake or not, open the list of accounts that have interacted with the post and access the personal pages of these accounts.

You can easily recognize that most of the interactive accounts are fake, newly created or barely active on Facebook.

These are accounts created using automated tools or taken over by hackers from long-inactive Facebook accounts. They will then use these "ghost accounts" to create fake interactions for posts to serve their fraudulent behavior.

If users discover posts with fake interactions, they should immediately ignore those posts and put the Facebook page with fake interactions on the "blacklist".

Check the posting time of the articles

Usually, scam Facebook pages will only recently start changing their name and posting posts related to their new Facebook page name.

However, to increase credibility, scammers will take advantage of Facebook's post scheduling feature to change the time the post appears on the page.

For example, Facebook pages impersonating hospitals will post posts about hospital activities in early September, but set the posts to appear in July, August, or the beginning of the year. This makes many users think that the Facebook page has been active for a long time.

Scheduled posts will have a clock icon next to the time they were posted. Users can hover their mouse (when accessing Facebook on a computer) over the clock to check.

The fake Facebook page of Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital displayed posts from September 1, but scheduled the display date to September 14, 2024 to gain users' trust (Screenshot taken by a reporter).

If you find a Facebook page with all of the above characteristics, you can confirm that this is a fake Facebook page, created for the purpose of fraud. Users need to stay away from these Facebook pages, absolutely do not provide personal information or follow the instructions on the page.

In addition, users should also click the "Report" button so that Facebook knows and handles fake Facebook pages.

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Internet scams are becoming more and more sophisticated in their attempts to steal personal information, assets, social media accounts, emails, etc. The above are some tips to help users identify fake Facebook pages, thereby raising their vigilance to avoid becoming victims of scammers.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/cong-nghe/canh-bao-chieu-tro-mao-danh-trang-facebook-benh-vien-de-lua-tien-tu-thien-20250908114515891.htm