I have a little request pretty please If you need to reach out with any questions, if you want to book etc, pretty please use the contact form on my website (the contact button will take you there too), I have a lot more control over what messages come through that way, and there are just more security features available to prevent my account from being improperly accessed. Meta essentially has no support for users, especially business pages and their security is severely lacking.
As you all know, there has been a ridiculous increase in scams literally everywhere and via every form of communication and social media. I have a constantly growing block list on all platforms, and even blocked numbers who not only call but also text trying to get me to click links, daily. Like 3-5 a day, it's so annoying. You may notice I no longer have a public phone number listed due to not only scammers, but also harassment. The scammers will pretend to be a potential client and try to get any form of contact and I just need to minimize this because they can sometimes be hard to spot.
The other reason I keep communication in writing is to protect myself from false accusations and misinformation. Sadly, not everyone can be pleased and sometimes it doesn't matter what I do or say, someone will always find a way to try and scam me, steal from me or make up something that never happened. The pandemic really brought out the worst in people and they've gotten comfortable living that way so some people I believe are just set out to do harm and I have to protect myself and my clients.
I've been seeing so many scams shared in the photography universe every single day, there are literally thousands of them and I myself have gotten the same thing.
A lot of them are messages through FB and IG and even emails through our website from people asking about photography services, but are scams and I myself had one somewhat recently for a cake smash session, I eventually clued in to being a scam and I had another I never even responded to because it was literally a copy/paste message I've been seeing in photography groups.
In my email, I have features that allow me to filter words and phrases so I never even see those emails and while I still do get new scams come through by email, they've been reduced significantly since I started blocking not only words, but I copied full sentences from the emails to block anything using those same phrases etc.
I hadn't been getting the latest Facebook one until yesterday, now I'm getting it multiple times where fake accounts named something like Meta Security, incident response etc will send what appears to be a legitimate message warning the business about community guideline violations, specific posts that violate guidelines etc.
These scammers are trying to gain access to accounts and from what I've seen, have been successful and businesses are losing access to their accounts and no matter what they do, Meta will not fix the problem or give them their accounts back so they lose their business page and all the hard work they've done, and even their personal accounts. I am reporting and blocking them immediately, but there's always another one.
I myself have all 2 factor authentication methods in use that are available to me with literally everything I do including my payment processor for bookings, so I hope am as secure as I can be and my account here isn't affected.
I would like to direct all communication through email via my website because the security google and my website provides and available features I can use are just not possible with Facebook and Instagram. The difference between social media and my website is I own my website, therefore have more control over it. It's just too easy for scammers to create fake accounts, or duplicate someone's account to scam others here and we just have no support from Meta.
If you contact me through my website/email, you know it will actually be me and that any links I send are legitimate and related to your session only.
If I turn off messaging with my page, I think I will lose all previous messages which I don't want to do, so I would just like to ask going forward please use email if possible because I'm not only trying to protect myself and my business, but you as well.
Please also let this be a reminder that I will never send you anything that clearly looks suspicious or not related to what you've messaged me about. I won't ask you for anything that has nothing to do with session information or booking, I won't send random links or booking links via messenger. I will always email you directly with my booking platform or my website link only. If you do get something that looks suspicious from an account appearing like mine, please let me know so I can handle it.
Unfortunately these scammers are not going anywhere, and we can only just block each one but since I can't trust FB or IG to keep you and I secure, I have to find other ways to do so and my website and email allow me to do that a lot better.
P.S, can we all just say awwww to the love big sis has for baby sis?
