It seems innocent enough, but in reality it could be setting you up for online danger down the road.

Recently, fake posts have been popping up on Facebook groups dedicated to Fort Dodge area residents buying and selling items. These posts, upon first glance, seem genuine — a parent searching for their child who didn’t return home after school, or a good samaritan who brought in a dog stuck out in the cold, or even of a citizen warning neighbors of a potential thief.

Instead, they’re hoaxes and scams that are potentially setting up the users who share them for more scams, according to a local cyber crime expert.

Webster County Sheriff’s Detective Alex Winninger with the Fort Dodge/Webster County Cyber Crimes Unit warns against falling victim to these fake posts.

-Screenshots by Kelby Wingert
Recently, hoaxes like these posts have been cropping up on Facebook marketplace groups. Webster County Sheriff’s Office Detective Alex Winninger said these posts can set up the users who share them to further scams.

While the hoax posts themselves don’t do much, the act of Facebook users sharing the post can set them up as targets for further scamming, Winninger said.

“They’re basically trying to see who’s going to be more vulnerable to other scams, and there’s so many out there,” he said.

These scam posts usually have several red flags, Winninger said. Often, they’re made using accounts that were created just hours prior, or from accounts not based in the area. Another red flag is when a Facebook user shares a post looking to reunite a pet or a child with its family, but they turn off the comments on the post, making it more difficult to get in touch with who they’re looking for.

Most of these posts include photos as well. Another way to verify the veracity of the post is to do a reverse Google image search to see where the photo came from. Typically, the photo will have been posted in multiple places before and likely be unrelated to the circumstances claimed in the post.

Winninger recommends social media users report these suspicious posts to the social media platform when they see them. While law enforcement might not necessarily be able to do anything, the social media platform can remove the post and ban the user who posted it.

-Screenshots by Kelby Wingert
Recently, hoaxes like these posts have been cropping up on Facebook marketplace groups. Webster County Sheriff’s Office Detective Alex Winninger said these posts can set up the users who share them to further scams.

In the case of posts purporting to show things like a missing child or claiming there’s a person stealing catalytic converters, Winninger recommends checking to see if local news outlets or local law enforcement have reported anything on it

-Screenshots by Kelby Wingert
Recently, hoaxes like these posts have been cropping up on Facebook marketplace groups. Webster County Sheriff’s Office Detective Alex Winninger said these posts can set up the users who share them to further scams.