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What advice do people have about claiming social accounts as a means to prevent scams? I’ve recently been asked to claim Instagram, Facebook, and Threads account names that are variations of our name in order to prevent outsiders claiming the accounts. I have concerns that it will actually confuse people and not, in fact,  stop them from tagging that account. 

 

We do already deal with countless scam Facebook accounts in our name. I’ve submitted all of these repeatedly as scams to Meta with nothing being done.

I would tend to agree with you. Do you use Meta’s Brand Rights Protection tool? (https://business.facebook.com/brand-rights-protection/) We’ve had a lot of success with it. Once we uploaded our registered trademark information, Meta has been surprisingly prompt at acting upon our takedown requests. Note that you’ll get four options when you report content through it: counterfeit, trademark infringement, copyright infringement, and impersonation. We’ve had the most success with trademark infringement, by far. Even when others are offering counterfeit product or “falsely representing a brand” (impersonation), at the end of the day it’s still about the trademark infringement and that’s what seems to light a fire under Meta. We’ve had dozens of fraudulent FB/IG accounts removed through this process.


Todd, This is brilliant. Thank you. I spoke with the organization I work for and we’re going to proceed in this direction. There are nearly 50+ fake accounts in their name on Facebook and annually we have guest’s complain they were sold fake tickets. I had been reporting each account as spam/impersonation, but this is the more direct efficient route. I appreciate you sharing this information! 


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