Roger-Luc Chayer
They are more and more numerous on social networks and more and more sophisticated, but few people know how to protect themselves from them. The reign of the grazers ends when they have no more victims! According to Wikipedia, “A browser is a scammer operating on the Internet, especially on social networks. The phenomenon of grazing appeared in the 2000s”.
Browsers have their specialties and generally operate romance scams and sexual blackmail, with false advertisements of property sales to obtain remote payments, advertisements of fake accommodations for rent to obtain rent deposits before the visit, false court summons for alleged charges of pedophilia or unpaid taxes or with fake celebrity accounts.
Often also, grazers will use real personal accounts, but which they have just opened, which generally have no history and which are only used in the context of their fraud attempts. Another way they gain credibility is to open a multitude of Facebook accounts etc., and link these accounts to show that they have several friends.
Generally, they make friend requests on Facebook and others with, often, the same wording « Cc or Hello Sir, I hope I don’t bother you » and they try everything to make you comfortable and confident, except that in the volume, they lose their credibility.
For example, just on the Facebook page of the Gay Globe group, I must receive between 10 and 40 requests a day depending on the season and it’s ridiculously always the same approach. So how do you protect yourself from grazers and harm their activities? By wasting their time!
First, you should never accept requests from countries that have absolutely no connection with you. The majority of grazers operate either from Africa or Asia, you are unlikely to develop a wonderful friendship with someone from Cameroon who tells you they fell in love with you after 15 minutes of talking on Messenger. Same thing with requests for help with eating or studying from people who have absolutely no history on their profile.
Know that as soon as you open the door to a grazer, no matter what he tells you, you expose yourself to consequences that can last for many years. Many have had the sad experience of showing themselves naked in front of a supposed friend without knowing that they were being filmed and that this video was going to be used to commit sexual blackmail, threatening people to publish the video on their friends’ accounts.
Legally, there is nothing to do, because the police services do not investigate fraud attempts from most of these countries since they never have the collaboration of the local authorities.
Caution is always advised on the web and the easiest way is to limit your contacts to people you know or to family members and friends.