Police and Netsafe are reminding people to be vigilant online following an increase in the number of fake and hacked Facebook accounts.
They say a growing number of New Zealanders are being deceived and losing large sums of money.
Netsafe is warning people not to trust anyone asking for money online, even if they're friends with you on Facebook.
"If there's any kind of offer or financial reward involved with various messages that you receive, just be cautious about why it is you're being requested to send money, or send money on behalf of somebody else," says Netsafe security consultant Chris Hails.
And he says you should always check people are who they say they are online.
"This is also true when a friend's page is hacked or their account is used to send messages out as well. So it is difficult to spot these scams, it can be quite hard to run a ruler over everything."
Netsafe says Facebook is being used by scammers because it has over 1.5 billion profiles and it is hard to detect a fake.
Users are advised to vet all of their Facebook friends to ensure they're not scammers.
Newshub.
