There’s an emotional story from the cybersecurity industry. A senior Australian photographer Doug Bazley lost all his 7-years of hard-work to wicked scammers who removed all his precious visuals that he had gathered with a lot of perseverance.
We generally come across cyberattack stories that involve talks around monetary or data losses. But this social media scam story is different. This story is about how an artist lost all of his precious works of art to scammers. This is the story of a senior photographer who used Facebook as his means of earning, and scammers snatched his livelihood.
All It Took Was One Wrong Click for this Social Media Scam
Just one wrong step can land you in hot waters, they say. The same happened with Doug Bazley. Mr Bazley lost control over his Facebook business page with just one click. He got an inbox message which appeared to be from “Meta”, the company that owns and operates Facebook. The message highlighted some problems and asked Bazley to click on the provided link to fix it.
“This Meta thing came up and it said to me, you need to go into this link to fix this problem,” Mr Bazley said, adding, “I hit that link and that was the start of the end, the page just went black, it disappeared. Then it changed the profile photo and changed the name and I had no access to my account.”
Mr Bazley was devastated to learn that he had lost his years of hard work to a social media scam. “It feels like your business has just burned down,” he said, adding, “I spent seven years building that and had about 16,000 followers.”
Bazley loves to take pictures on his travel across Australia, and he converted his passion into his profession. His business is all gone along with the data stolen from his Facebook page.
Mr Bazley’s loss due to the social media scam is not limited to just data, it is monetary too. “I do all my business on there, I have lost every single contact and there was close on $3,000 worth of calendar orders prepaid and those names and contact details have gone.” He also tried to report the issue to Meta and Facebook, but all in vain. “I’ve not even heard a word from them,” reported ABC News quoting Bazley.
“I don’t understand why Facebook don’t stop these, when you report them they say, ‘Oh we can’t see any abuse or anything wrong,’ it’s just ridiculous.”, reports ABC News quoting Mr Bazley. He hopes this incident is going to serve as a lesson for those who are totally reliant on social media platforms for their businesses.
What Do We Learn?
Doug Bazley’s story though, is quite depressing, but it does give us a learning. His story highlights the importance of vigilance while using social media platforms. “All I can say is people need to be very aware of what links they get and who they let in,” Mr Bazley said, talking about the social media scam.
Every year, October is designated as the Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Cybersecurity is not meant just for governments and businesses, It is for individuals as well. Common masses too, suffer heavily at the hands of cybercriminals, yet we find very few stories talking about them. With this story, The Cyber Express aims to delve into the perilous impact that the lack of Cybersecurity can have on individuals and businesses of smaller scale that are gathering all their leads via Social Media and the internet.
Media Disclaimer: This report is based on internal and external research obtained through various means. The information provided is for reference purposes only, and users bear full responsibility for their reliance on it. The Cyber Express assumes no liability for the accuracy or consequences of using this information.