Facebook Business Manager Invite Scam — One Click & Your Page is Gone Forever

Scammers have been around long before the internet existed. At least back then they were obligated to scam you face to face. These days they have the ability to hide behind their screens and conceal their identities. Their ability to work in the shadows combined with the accessibility the internet offers makes it one of the best times in history to be a scammer. As such, there are potential threats to each of us personally and our businesses lurking around every corner, waiting for an opportunity.

It seems that we have been talking and warning people about the infamous Business Manager scam for several years now.

Sadly, it’s not going away. If anything, this scam is getting more elaborate and more sophisticated. Over the last twelve months, it is still been the most popular way fanpage owners lose their properties. This method is the main and most effective tool in the scammer’s toolbox, and it has evolved into different versions.

What is the Business Manager Invite Scam?

The scam revolves around the Facebook Business Manager, which is a tool any Facebook user can use. It lets people share and control access to ad accounts, fanpages, and other Facebook assets. Business Managers can see all of the Pages and ad accounts they work on in one place, without sharing login information or being connected to their coworkers on Facebook.

A Business Manager can also request ownership of any page, and if such a request is accepted it is irrevocable, and the new manager will trump the rights of any previous admin.

The image above is an example of what a real Business Manager request looks like. In this example we have used LoL as the name of the manager but, a real scam will use a more elaborate name to trick you into accepting the invite.

If you grant access via this method, you will immediately lose control of your fanpage and you will not be protected by the new 7-day admin removal rule . In fact, it is so bad that you won’t even be able to remove yourself. The new admin will have a “Page Owner” tag next to

They will have total and complete control. They will have the ability to remove all admins with a click of a button and your chances at page recovery are almost zero.

It looks so realistic!

At first glance you may be saying to yourself — “I would never fall for that” . We thought the same thing until we had acquaintances have their pages stolen via this method.

Before exploring all of the new scams below, watch this guy lose his 160K Facebook Page and then tell us that you’d never fall for it. Everything within this video seemed 100% legit and he lost everything with one click of a button. Now that you understand how serious of a threat this is and how easily it can happen to you, review all of the other Business Manager scams and be on the lookout.

New Business Manager scams:

Page verification scam

This method uses “Facebook Verification” as the Business Manager name, which makes it look like Facebook wants to verify your page and give you the coveted blue verified badge.

Obviously, this is a scam, and this is not how verification badges are awarded, but if you aren’t familiar with how the verification process does work and the corresponding conversation line up correctly, you could easily click a single button a lose your page.

Fake like removal scam

This method often starts with a message that gets sent to your pages inbox, and it will state that you need to “allow the invite in order to remove fake likes, failure to comply will result in page removal.”

Then you will receive an invite from “Verify Your FanPage” as the Business Manager name that will come with an official-looking Facebook logo (usually with a shield) next to the name (in the place of the Facebook flag seen in the image above).

If you click the accept button, you will lose your page forever.

Upgrade your account to business manager scam

This method is the most popular among scammers, but it only works when the scammer knows the address of your personal profile.

The way the scam works is you first receive a message from an official-sounding account related to Facebook staff (FB Staff/Facebook Security/etc…).

The message will state that “Your account and fanpage are eligible for a Business Manager upgrade. To accept go to your fanpage Settings, then click Page Roles and accept the request.”

The trick here is that the scammer will register a Facebook profile with your name and copy your profile photo. When the Business Manager invite is sent to you it looks like you are upgrading your own account.

The invite will say:

  • A business manager wants to access your page.
  • Business account name: Your own name & Photo.

This method is extremely simple, but effective. Especially for those with personal brands.

Anyone with a decent fanpage probably receives countless messages like — “I will give you 100,000 USD for your fanpage, please add me…”

Rest assured that you won’t get paid 100k for your page, the scammers simply want to locate your personal account so they can copy the name and photo so they can try the scam on you.

The best advice anyone can give is to stay vigilant and don’t message untrusted individuals from your personal accounts.

Keep your eyes open, don’t make hasty decisions, and if you aren’t sure about a particular action, research it first. It’s likely that it’s not the first time that scam has been run and someone has probably talked about it openly on a blog, news site or on YouTube.

If there is any doubt, contact us and we will do our best to take a look at your situation and help in any way we can.

– Article by @austinlawson.

9 Likes

Finally this is confirmed. I get at least 2 request for this week and have thought it to be a scam fro. Day 1. Thank you for posting…

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Would it work if someone has a lost a business manager account and are still admin on the page from another profile, then they send this kind of link to gain access to the page and get it removed from the disabled business manager? Just curious.

It is a sad situation.

I think that in a few years legal contracts could help a lot.

brro

@SWAPD, check out this email I got. They’re getting sophisticated even with this stuff. If this wasn’t a backup Facebook account only for ads, I might have fallen victim to pressing the button.

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I have someone wanting to run sponsored posts on a page of mine. They requested my email address as they want to go through sponsored dashboard. The email showed up to email accou t but can’t find anything about the request on actual Facebook?

Should I run or is sponsored dashboard a legit thing? The email has business manager on it so it makes me nervous.

@nutsforsports If you want to keep your pages I would ignore this request and abstain from any further interaction with the scammers who message you.

Accepting this will make them a partner on your business manager, giving them full extent to remove your pages and do other malicious actions. Again, Do NOT accept this.

It is a well crafted phishing email and is not new, there are thousands of individuals who have fallen for this

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Ok. Thanks! Read about it here so haven’t acted on anything yet. Wanted to be sure.

i saw a lot of posts , People were talked about that ! They are scamming and they don’t care about anyone ! They don’t know that god will never help them !
Why am i using swapd ? I’m feel that swapd is 100 % Trusted and i can close my ayes when i’m dealing with Swapd STAFF ! this website is for all legit members

@Vlbrantofficial seams like you are working on removing your safety concern :smiley:

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I’m 18 years old that why i’ve got this badge but i think this badge will be removed as soon as possible , once i will have 3 successful deals :heart: :muscle:

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@Vlbrantofficial It’s your country of residence and not your age, unless SWAPD actually specified that… I joined when I was 18 aswell.

That’s what swapd said to me

Age also matters, new policies, @Brant.

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I’ve been received multiple emails from people claiming from “Buzzfeed”, working with brands like “Nike”, etc… and proposed that they want to collaborate in post ads on my verified FB page, on the right side.

Not a feed post but a Sponsor ad on the right side. They want to pay between $300-$500/ad to run 24 hours and said want to do 1 ad per day. So 7 x $500 = $3500/week potential earning for me if they just want to run their ads on the right side of my FB page.

Any update ?

Interesting read :facepunch:t2:

Thank you for the article @austinlawson :+1:t2:

I lost my page the same way.
200k followers. Loved it. They promised all sorts of money for articles and ads. Disappeared quickly. Stay away.

You can recover it.