As you get several friend requests from people on social media which you haven't met before,you need to be very careful and vigilant before you accept any friend request.

How can you protect yourself from scammers and hackers on the prowl?

Here are simple tips you can apply to detect them.

* Go through the person's profile section.

* Check his/her friends.

* Go through 2-3 posts so that you will understand the type of person you'd soon be connecting with.

* Check out those that tagged him or her.

If you see several screenshots of bank alerts,

Beware!

It might be an indicator that the account may have been hacked.

Doing this may take as little as 2-3 minutes of your time but it will help you to sieve out spammers, scammers, and hacked accounts.

Whenever you receive a friend request, always take your time to go through the sender's timeline and check his or her recent posts.

If you see several screenshots of bank alerts and payment receipts, you need to beware of such friend requests.

The account may have been hacked when you observe such.

Also, be wary of external links.

As much as possible, don't be too quick to log in to Facebook or other platforms through suspicious website links.

You may not be able to detect if they are legit or not but that's why you shouldn't always get carried away when you see supposedly 'free MTN offers', grant message offer, messages about 'free covid-19 cash support from 'the Federal government' and the likes.

Lastly, activate your Two-factor authenticator on Facebook.

Have you ever had experience with online scammers?

How did you detect them?

© Udoh Sunday Edidiong