WATCHOUT FOR FRAUD BY FACEBOOK

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Watchout For Fraud By Facebook
mikeechols.com/watchout-for-fraud-by-facebook Mich
ael Echols
Facebooks Friendly Fraud Being a parent is one
of the most difficult jobs ever. Raising a child
is time-consuming and expensive, but for many it
is well-worth it. The costs of raising children
are usually associated with feeding and clothing
them. Though recently, parenting became more
expensive due to Facebooks shenanigans that
drained some parents bank accounts by way of
their kids. In an effort to increase the social
media sites revenue, the tech giant encouraged
practices that bypassed parental protections.
Game developers designed online platforms,
accessed through Facebook, that allowed eager
children to spend money without a parents
permission. We call this friendly fraud.
However, in some neighborhoods they call it
plain old theft. How Did They Do It? According
to an investigative report from Reveal, Facebook
has been defrauding children and their parents
for 6 years through unscrupulous practices. While
playing games on the social media platform,
children were unintentionally charging their
parents credit cards that were linked to the
Facebook accounts. In one case, a 15-year old
spent 6,500 in a two-week period, which is about
five times the average monthly rent! As a
result, credit card companies issued chargebacks,
causing the chargeback rates for Facebook to hit
9. According to the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC), an indication of deceptive business
starts with 2, which means that Facebook was 9
times over the red flag threshold. Despite
warnings from employees and concerned game
developers, the company prioritized revenue
maximization over ethics, and apparently the
law. Facebooks Response to Fraud Facebook is
not the only company participating in practices
allowing children to unknowingly spending their
parents life-savings. Other companies, such as
Google and Apple, have
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addressed this problem by requiring users to
enter a passcode or credit card number to
complete a transaction. And in most cases,
parents do not share this type of sensitive
information with their children, which eliminates
the potential of careless transactions. The
telephone companies dealt with this smartphone
issue a few years ago. So clearly this is not a
new issue and should have been managed
accordingly. According to an internal Facebook
team member, the company tried to emulate Google
and Apples basic check-ins. In a test trial,
kids were required to input the first 6 digits of
a credit card number before they were able to
play certain games. And voila, it worked.
Facebook saw a decrease in chargebacks and
refunds from children. You would think that the
company enacted this strategy immediately, but
you would be wrong. Facebook recognized that
implementing these check-ins would decrease
their revenues, which was the exact opposite of
their goal. In fact, it took the company until
2016 to update its terms and instate the credit
card authentication for games found on their
site. To make matters worse, Facebook denied
several users their refunds. Instead, the tech
giant offered virtual goods as a means to pay off
upset parents. Of course, this cost Facebook
nothing. The revenue was kept intact. The
Takeaway Facebook has done nothing to prevent
friendly fraud, even when the company was caught
red- handed. Since then, Facebook has been under
fire for several data privacy infractions. In
their , most recent data protection incident,
the company had a breach that disclosed its
users personal information. There were other
incidents where they simply sold the data without
their permission. Stay Woke We strongly
recommend that parents pay particular attention
to their childrens online activities it could
protect your life-savings. Facebook is one of the
nations largest conglomerates and are not your
friend. The integration of Facebook in our lives
is a symptom of our loss of self. It is up to
each person to monitor the privy they give away
and understand the implications of letting the
world into your life. It is especially your
responsibility to assure you are not letting your
money fade into the platforms ether and onto
Mr. Zuckerbergs balance sheet. Stay woke! For
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