Positively Perfect Profile Pictures

This month I’ve been sharing information about catfishing scams.

Last week on one of my Instagram posts about catfishing, I received an interesting comment. The commenter basically said each person has value and a lot of people want to present their best self on social media, and to say that it's a scam is inaccurate. 

 

This comment got me thinking about how we represent ourselves on social media.

 

In today’s Pinterest perfect society many of us only present our best selves on social media.  If you’re a business owner you are probably sharing branded, professional headshots of yourself on social media.  Why?  You want to look confident and put together.  You want to demonstrate that you are an expert that others can relate to and trust.  You want to present your best self to current and future customers to demonstrate the value of your products and services.

 

There's nothing wrong with presenting your best self on social media, that's not what catfishing scams are, and I want to make this clear.

 

Catfishing scams are so, so much more than presenting your best self to the world.

Catfishing scams are:

·        Complete and total misrepresentations

·        Fake identities

·        Bad intentions

·        Lies

·        Pictures of someone else being used to falsely represent themselves

 

Are you familiar with the expression if something is too good to be true then it probably is?  That’s what these fraudsters are doing.  They’re creating profiles that appear positively perfect (but they’re absolutely fake) to trick you into engaging and giving away your money.

 

When you see that profile full of perfect pictures from a modeling session or war hero pictures take a moment and do some digging before you get hooked by a catfishing scam.

 

Review the Instagram post for yourself and get in on the discussion.