Snapchat Scams: How To Protect Yourself and Your Kids

It’s a sad fact of human nature that wherever we meet to have fun, socialize or do any kind of business, scammers are likely to show up and try to take advantage. Despite its reputation as a kid-friendly hangout and a service that’s designed to minimize your digital footprint, Snapchat is no exception. It’s especially worrying for parents that many of the common Snapchat scams target vulnerable teens.

Here’s a quick guide to some of the more common Snapchat scams and some advice for parents on keeping your kids safe.

Phishing Scams Are Alive and Well

One of the oldest tricks in the book is phishing, and it’s alive and well on the Snapchat platform. It’s a deceptively simple attack: You receive a message — usually purporting to come from a friend or acquaintance, or perhaps even Snapchat itself — containing a link. When you click on the link, you’re directed to a malicious website. Some schemes load malware onto your phone, giving the scammers access. Those purporting to be from Snapchat usually take you to a spoofed login page where you’ll be prompted to enter your login credentials.

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With those credentials, the scammers can lock you out of your account by simply resetting the password. Once they’re in control, they’ll contact you and demand payment in exchange for returning control of your account or — especially if you’re a young woman or vulnerable teen — in exchange for potentially damaging content such as nude photos or on-screen sexual acts.

Having access to your account gives them your phone number, address and any embarrassing personal photos or information attached to your account, so the demands are usually backed by blackmail. Unfortunately, meeting their demands usually leads to a second demand rather than the return of your account. Oh, and it gets worse: That first compromised account often gives them a toehold to attack others on your friends list.

“Help a Friend” Snapchat Scams

A variation on the phishing scam takes the form of a pleading message that comes, apparently, from a friend. The story is that your friend has been locked out of her account and needs to access yours temporarily to straighten things out with Snapchat. In fact, this is one way the first compromised account can be used to attack others. Once you’ve given your “friend” the login to your account, this version of the scam works exactly the same way as the phishing attack.

“Pay for Access” Snapchat Scams

Another common scam asks for payment from victims in order to access premium content. Some artists and content creators legitimately rely on this income stream as a way to monetize their talent, but usually “premium content” is a euphemism for nude photos or outright pornography (it’s not officially condoned on the platform, but it happens).

Once the payment is received, the scammer simply disappears and blocks the sender. The victims — usually male — are often too embarrassed to complain, so the scammer gets off scot-free. Some enterprising fraud artists carry out a wholesale version of this scam, “scraping” photos of actual performers and setting up fake Snapchat IDs in batches, using those pictures. Once a given ID has pillaged enough victims, it’s simply deleted. This approach victimizes the legitimate performers as well as the “marks.”

Expect the “Greatest Hits” on Snapchat as Well

While those are a few especially high-profile Snapchat scams, you can also expect to encounter the same portfolio of long-running scams that plague other platforms. These include:

Messages supposedly coming from friends or family requesting funds to meet a specific emergency.
Romance scams targeting the lonely, especially Snapchat’s growing number of older users.
Check-cashing scams, where the victim deposits a check and sends money to the scammer only to have the check bounce a few days later.
Prize scams telling you you’ve won a prize and just need to pay a small fee (or give them your banking information) so you can claim it.

As always, your best defense is to make sure you’re up to date on common scams and know how to recognize them. You’ll find plenty of information on sites like the FBI’s Common Scams page and the FTC’s Scam Alerts page, and even your financial institution may offer a useful heads-up. Pro tip: The “Safety” category on this very blog is a great resource, too.

Some Common-Sense Precautions

There are a few simple and universally applicable steps you can take to avoid Snapchat scams. The first is simply to practice a healthy level of skepticism. Instead of clicking a link within a message, visit the site directly in a browser to verify that the message you received is legitimate. Some of them you can rule out right away by checking the site’s policies: Snapchat will never ask for your password, for example, because they don’t need it to address an issue with your account.

If you receive a message that supposedly comes from a friend, reach out by phone or through another messaging app to confirm it’s really them. If Snapchat is usually your only channel of communication, turn to Spokeo’s people search tools for some help. If you know at least the person’s real name, enter that in. Once you have some search results, you can narrow them down by the state or city where the person lives, and hopefully find a phone number or email address. You can even search on the person’s username if that’s all you’ve got.

That’s also the best way to unmask romance scammers, “catfishers” and other bad actors on your own account or potential predators and fake accounts on your kids’ friends lists.

Protecting Your Kids

One important aspect of Snapchat is its popularity with users as young as 13. Unlike many other apps, Snapchat doesn’t provide parental controls, and for privacy reasons the company won’t allow you access to an account your child has set up. As the saying goes, “It’s a feature, not a bug.” That lack of oversight is part of Snapchat’s appeal to younger users.

That leaves you with fewer options than you might like for active “Snapchat parenting.” One is to simply set the account up in the child’s name, with yourself in control of the privacy settings and login information. It would work, but is likely to become a major point of contention as they grow older.

A better option is to be proactive and simply talk things through with your kids. Familiarize yourself with Snapchat’s guide for parents, Safety Center and Community Guidelines, and make sure your kids do as well. Explain to them about common scams and how to spot and avoid them. Most of all, make sure they know to come to you — or to a teacher or other trusted adult, if they’re too embarrassed to face a parent — if an issue should arise.

Train ‘Em Up, and Let ‘Em Go

It may not feel comfortable for you to give your children that kind of freedom, but (to repurpose an old proverb) it’s the difference between giving them a fish and teaching them to fish. It will be hard on your nerves and you may still need to be vigilant and step in sometimes, but teaching them how to protect themselves (and trusting them to do it) better equips them to grow into their roles as adults in a digital-centric world.