Social media makes it incredibly easy for scammers to hide their identity—or even pretend to be someone else—while providing access to an extremely wide network of potential targets. And the angles are nearly limitless.

One avenue that saw incidents skyrocket during the pandemic is e-commerce sites that don’t deliver the product, and nearly one-quarter of the reports involve a social media hook. And in reports that mention a specific platform, 94% mention Facebook or Instagram.

Social media is a particularly popular outlet for romance scams—in fact, more people than every have reported losing money to romance scams. And half of all romance scams since 2019 involve social media in some form.

Unemployment was a major symptom of the pandemic and related restrictions on business nationwide. As more and more citizens lost jobs or were forced to quit to take care of children home from school, multi-level marketing companies provide what seems like an easy way to earn money from home. Many recruiters offer too-good-to-be-true earnings, which is always a red flag of employment scams. The fact is, some MLM companies are pyramid schemes; and even ones that aren’t rarely see their “employees” striking it rich. In fact, most people who join an MLM make little or no money with it.

And social media groups, such as those found on Facebook, have become a hot target of scammers. Those in groups tend to trust the group’s members—a scammer who has become one of the group has an easy time finding targets.