Michigan Asks: What’s With Those Facebook Page Deletion Messages?

If you manage a Facebook page, chances are you've received one, two, a dozen, or countless messages threatening to delete your account. Don't click on them, just hit DELETE.

Related: URGENT: Michigan Law Enforcement Issues IOS 17 Privacy Warning

I haven't been foolish enough to click on these, but I did click on a link once that fortunately didn't delete anything, but it did result in losing an afternoon to an online training course on how to spot scams. The company I was working for sent fake emails out on occasion to see who would take the bait, I did, and I learned my lesson.

What's the Deal with the Facebook Page Deletion Threat Scam?

The picture above is a message sent to one of the Facebook Pages I manage (all of which have received similar threats). Here's the text:

Dear Admin Page,
Your Page Will Be Removed Because has a report of more than one users.
Account Confirmation: https:.............................................
This is lastest warning, if you don't confirmation account your page will be remove next 12 hours.
Best Regard,
Support Ads Team

Somewhere, my high school English 5th grade English teacher's eye is twitching. I'd run this through my free Grammarly account, but I'm afraid it would ask me to leave.

Please show this to the grammar nut in your life, and make them read it in front of you. Watch as they go from slightly annoyed to full-on rage.

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Let's capitalization, bad spelling, and a grasp of sentence structure aside, because those aren't even the biggest red flags.

You'll notice I didn't put the link address in the above quote, but you can see it in the picture above. Does it say Facebook or Meta anywhere in there? Nope, and that my friend is where you need to look! Why? Because some of these scammers can spell.

You can see in the above screenshot that 'Jayachandrain' (more than likely a stolen or hacked profile) has written a very professional message that might tempt you into believing it's legit...BUT WAIT! CHECK THE LINK!

What Happens If You Click on the Link on the Facebook Deletion Scam Messages?

Once again, nothing Meta and nothing Facebook. But what happens if you click the link? I'm not going to click in and find out but, fortunately, somebody did. Trend Micro, a cyber security company says that most links take you to a fake Facebook Appeal Page and the only link that works on it is APPEAL. Here's where that will take you:

 a form will unfold and ask you to fill in information like login email addresses, phone numbers, names, and page names. The information you submit will end up in scammers/hackers’ hands. With that, they can contact you, pretending to be Facebook officials, and trick you into sending your login credentials. They can thus get access to your Facebook account along with your fan pages. Or, they can use the information for other scams such as identity theft.

Your best bet, once again, hit DELETE. But, what if Facebook wanted to shut down your page? Well, the Meta / Facebook team talks directly to you, not through your messenger. If there was an issue you'd receive an email from Facebook, BUT CHECK THE LINK FIRST BEFORE CLICKING IT.