Social media lets fraudsters contact many different people at a relatively low cost. It is also easy to create a site, account, email, direct message, or web page that looks and feels legitimate – and that feeling of legitimacy gives criminals a better chance to convince you to send them your money. Finally, it can be difficult to track down the true account holders that use social media.

Here are five tips to protect individual investors from using social media, while protecting themselves?

If you see a new post on your wall, a tweet mentioning you, a direct message, an email, or any other method of communication that you didn’t ask for and don’t know the sender regarding a so-called investment opportunity, you should exercise extreme caution.⁣

Wherever you come across a recommendation for an investment – be it on the Internet or from a personal friend (or both), beware of the “red flags” before making an investment decision: sounds too good to be true, a promise of guaranteed return, pressure to invest right now.⁣

Never make an investment based solely on the recommendation of a member of an organization or group to which you belong, especially if the pitch is made online.

Understand that unless you guard personal information, it may be available not only for your friends but for anyone with access to the Internet – including fraudsters.⁣

Investigate the investment thoroughly and check the truth of every statement you are told about the investment. ⁣

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐮𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.