Debt Collectors Will Try To Reach You Through Facebook, Too

Your Facebook profile can and will be used against you.

A recent segment on KDVR, the Fox affiliate for Denver, reminds us that collection agencies are happy to go through social media channels if they think it will help them squeeze money out of someone.

Debt collectors will "set up fake profiles and befriend you on Facebook, just to get into your personal information," says Denisa Tova, a financial planner, on the KDVR segment.

It's not a new tactic -- debt collectors have actually been using Facebook for years to reach out to people. Collectors have also been accused of impersonating a debtor's friends online, or posting public messages saying the person owes money. In an increasingly aggressive environment, those tactics may be used more often.

Last year, the Federal Trade Commission received a record number of consumer complaints about debt collectors -- little wonder, when collection agencies are allegedly doing things like leaning on people who don't actually owe money, and threatening to exhume the dead loved ones of debtors if they don't settle their accounts. A few such recipients of hostile attention have begun to fight back with lawsuits.

Last fall, in the U.K., the Office of Fair Trading, which had been receiving consumer complaints about online harassment, made it illegal for debt collectors to contact people through Facebook or Twitter.

Social media is just one of many frontiers where debt collectors, regulators and consumers are fighting their ongoing battle. Collection agencies have become increasingly nasty in recent years, resorting to ever more inventive and abusive tactics as the industry grows more competitive, and as cash-strapped debtors -- against a wider backdrop of high unemployment, low wages and lack of savings -- are increasingly unable or unwilling to pay up.

Comments

[Annette Hammond]

09:51 PM on 10/19/2012

The only debt i paid to a collector was to a phone company.The collector was very nice and polite.I made min.payments.I refuse to even talk to someone that is a jerk.They hang up on ME.

[Annette Hammond]

09:48 PM on 10/19/2012

They can friend me all they want.As long as they become my neighbor on Farmville. Can't squeeze blood out of a turnip.

[Kimiko Austin-Rijs]

07:16 AM on 10/20/2012

LOL!

[swftrh]

02:34 PM on 11/01/2012

TOO FUNNY!

[Christos Palmer]

07:42 AM on 04/28/2012

After 6 years action to recover debts can't be enforced in the UK! Same sort of thing in other countries I would imagine.

[Christos Palmer]

07:35 AM on 04/28/2012

I was wondering why I had so many friends.

[nirvana101]

09:58 AM on 04/25/2012

For people with old debts, each state has a Statute of Limitations maximum that creditors can or can't use the court system for. Check your individual state and see what that limit is.

[Captain Yesterday]

10:18 PM on 04/24/2012

Remember kids... never talk to strangers!

[authorized-user]

06:01 PM on 04/24/2012

Every day more people learn ( the hard way) that anonymity is your best friend, thanks to FB exposing you to the scum of the universe.

[kemarie21]

06:00 PM on 04/24/2012

If you don't want to pay the bill then you shouldn't have made it. Guess what it's no different then someone "buying" something from you and never paying you. Those who don't pay their bill are thiefs plain and simple. I don't have a credit card. If I can't pay with cash or use my debit card I won't buy it.

[gopgotnosoul]

10:25 PM on 04/24/2012

Good for you.

[kemarie21]

02:33 PM on 04/25/2012

Yep I am awesome!

[Bigleague]

11:07 PM on 04/24/2012

So what's your brilliant advice to those that are being illegally harassed about debts that ARE NOT theirs?
Hopefully tomorrow you won't have one of those leaches latch onto you and not let go until you start a lawsuit for their illegal behavior regarding a debt that is not yours and you do not owe to anybody much less them (while that tack of 2,000% interest).
Are there people who got themselves into debt they couldn't repay? Sure.
Are there people who have NOT gotten themselve into debt and these people will threaten them, harass them, break the law, humiliate them, lie to them all to try to bully them out of money that they do not owe anybody? ABSOLUTELY !

[Johnangry]

08:55 AM on 04/25/2012

How else do you get people to pay?

[kemarie21]

02:32 PM on 04/25/2012

You know I don't really believe that it happens that often. I always wonder if the people are telling half truths.

[nobodysgirl]

05:05 PM on 04/24/2012

O, it's just the beginning, America!

You're so quick to embrace all that expensive, invasive new technology, you just gobble it right up!. You don't care that you're being surveilled, monitored, and controlled - mostly so others can market to you NONSTOP - and in exchange for that lackadaisical attitude about your personal liberties, you're going to end up losing them. All of them, eventually. Problem is, the rest of us who do still care about personal liberties and this being the Land of the Free have to live under the same.

Look what you have to do to get a job now - employers want to know every single tidbit about your entire life. Just to work for them! There's databases with detailed infor about each of us. Is this all in the name of progress? It sure isn't progressing the average working American, it's putting us in tighter and tigher reins.
There's drones now - anyone can buy - you can listen in on your neighbors at will. Law enforcement now has the right, thanks to supreme iddeootts, to strip search you whenever they want . GPS tracking you everywhere you go; clothing labels that have trackers in them, on and on and on.

Everyone turning stoooopid, begging everyone to 'like us!" on facebook, etc.


"Someone who will give up their liberties in exchange for safety, deserves neither." - B Franklin

Amen, Ben. This Brave New America isn't half the country it used to be.

[kemarie21]

05:58 PM on 04/24/2012

hahaha you make it like American's are the only people using this.

[edavis0528]

03:53 PM on 04/24/2012

I learned yesterday (from an ex debt collector) that EVERY debt collection agency has the power to settle at 50% + payment plan. You're all welcome.

[fritzcalkins]

02:56 PM on 04/24/2012

All you have to do is pay the bills you agreed to pay and you won't have any trouble.

[frank day]

03:35 PM on 04/24/2012

Really? What if they have you by mistake?? Then what??

Comment FAIL

[glpseattle]

04:41 PM on 04/24/2012

if it was just that easy for everyone, what about asking the banks and financial companies to cover their own losses like it happened few years ago with the sub-prime debacle and they wont have any trouble.
Oh yes forgot they didn't , they came to us to bail them out and then raised everyone's interest rates and fees .

[spytheweb]

02:23 PM on 04/24/2012

I'am not on facebook.

[nobodysgirl]

05:08 PM on 04/24/2012

Ditto. please tometcha spytheweb.

Don't they all look incredibly stupid, begging "likemelikemelikeme"?

[kemarie21]

06:02 PM on 04/24/2012

It's not all bad. I use it to connect with my family that I don't see often. I also use it to organize the groups I lead.

[randinoel]

02:19 PM on 04/24/2012

They never work with me and I'm disgusted. Their ."take it all attitude." instead of settling with what I'm willing to give is disgusting. They dont seem to understand any situation. Yes, their job is to collect a debt, but not if it means you will try to squeeze the pennies I make out of my 8 dollar an hour job to support my son and buy some friggen tampons!

[MyNinja]

01:38 PM on 04/24/2012

So don't approve someone you don't know...

[kemarie21]

06:03 PM on 04/24/2012

That seems like common sense. But yet everyone wants as many friends as possible. Like all those 300, 400+ friends even care about them.

[Americanwoman55]

01:21 PM on 04/24/2012

Well with consumers now facing 29.99% interest rates in the worse economic times in history while Congress wants to regulate our utureses and lower minimum wages of women in some states like wisconsin and Florida. Is it any wonder this is going on too!!

Sorry but this is just another example of our government not protecting us from corporations but trying to strip us of our basic rights as humans!!!

[Americanwoman55]

01:58 PM on 04/24/2012

Really!!! What have I said that is incorrect!! Nothing. Interest rates on credit cards are in fact up to 29.99% as of March 1st. FACT.
Congress has before it several bill and states have in fact made in much harder for women to get LEGAL abortions, and Borth Control (some pharmacist refusing under "moral reasons" to hand it out along with Plan B, inflicting their BS religion upon women) and the Blunt Amendment which almost all Republicans supported would have given ALL employer not just religious organization but all Employers the rights to MORALLY control Health insurance including Birth control!!! No I got it right!!

[Eulogistics]

01:59 PM on 04/24/2012

You mean whose fault is it that you added someone as a friend you don't know?

29.99% interest rate: http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/28/pf/bank_of_america_late_penalty/index.htm

Congress wanting to regulate uteruses : http://www.opencongress.org/issue/show/5168_abortion

Lower minimum wages for women in wisconsin: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/07/wisconsin-s-repeal-of-equal-pay-rights-adds-to-battles-for-women.html

Feel free to keep saying "NUH-UH!", though; it'll win you arguments with people who can't use the internet and 12 year-olds.

[Lechiffre]

01:54 PM on 04/24/2012

stop buying ipads and save some money.

[frank day]

03:39 PM on 04/24/2012

random