From Likes to Lures – How Predators Use Social Media

Realtors need to use social media. That’s a given. But in today’s digital age, predators exploit the power of social media to lure and gather information about potential victims, making it a crucial topic for realtors to grasp. 

Real estate agents can’t overlook the inherent risks associated with social media marketing. 

Contact Us
Our website https://streetsafeselfdefence.com/
Send us an email
613-340-8002 

Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Twitter  

Transcript

Beth Andress (00:00):

You are putting a beacon out there that says, this is where I'm going to be at this time for this length of time, and I'm going to be there by myself, potentially. Come see me.

Rob Andress (00:24):

Welcome to Realtor Safety with Rob and Beth. Hey Beth, how are you doing this morning?

Beth Andress (00:29):

Hey, I'm doing great, Rob. It's good to have everybody back today and I'm really excited that we're going to be talking about social media.

Rob Andress (00:38):

You know what powerful topic, and I think this is a topic that a lot of realtors understand why they need to use social media, but I think far too often they don't understand the risks in using social media, especially when they start receiving contacts from cold calls or people that they don't know or have never had any contact with prior to. And in starting the session, Beth, what I want to share is a quick story about a realtor that both you and I worked with and an experience that she had and we were able to trace this back to the original contact happening on YouTube. The contact went from YouTube to Instagram and then Instagram into Facebook. So this individual ended up having access to all social media accounts of this professional realtor. And what ended up happening here is the individual reached out to her out of country.

(01:46):

He was an out of country individual trying to set up showings and when a phone call was made and contact was verbally made with the professional, she started to get a sense of something wasn't right. And as multiple phone calls continued on, she eventually attempted to cut off contact with this individual. Now you have to remember at a country on the day that the original showing was scheduled for, and in her mind she had no appointment because she cut this off with this individual. What ended up happening is she received a G P S screenshot from a phone from the airport where the city was that she operated from. And the message was, I'm here. And within about an hour and a half to two hours, she received another screenshot. And this screenshot was of the subdivision she lived in with the message. I'm here. And I think far too often the real estate professional doesn't respect maybe the determination and motivation that online stalking creates and causes in predatorial behavior. And that's something that I think we really need to talk about today.

Beth Andress (03:21):

Well, that I remember speaking with that realtor and how unnerving that was for her to know that someone who had initially just commented on a YouTube video that turned into a prospective buyer that was from another country actually ended up blocks away from her home uninvited,

Rob Andress (03:49):

Horrifying when you think about it. So when we open up, I just want to give some really startling statistics, and it's known in every day in North America there's 600,000 online predators every day hunting for victims targets. And we know today that 64% are targeting children under the age of 18 that's leaving the rest of them who are targeting victims based on fantasy and domination and control. And some of them are actually sexual fantasies as well. So those are the numbers. And realtors don't realize that they fall into a category of celebrity stalking. These people are celebrities. Their faces are everywhere, their signs are everywhere, their social media is everywhere, they are celebrities. And I think sometimes the professional believes that it has to be a certain image or a certain type of realtor that attracts this individual. Is that true?

Beth Andress (05:00):

Well, we encounter that so often that they say to us, why would somebody pick me? And that misconception that the predator is looking for a certain type that society may deem attractive or vulnerable, that is not always the case.

Rob Andress (05:24):

The farthest thing from the truth, it can be anything that attracts

Beth Andress (05:28):

You just don't know what that hook is going to be, what you have that predator is looking for.

Rob Andress (05:35):

And I think what happens with us, right as professionals, and I mean I'm a real estate broker and I understand it, right? We need to reach out on social media to create relationships to allow people to know who we are and what we do and how successful we are.

Beth Andress (05:53):

Well, internet marketing is actually for realtors only second to referrals when it comes to gaining new clients. It is a, social media is an excellent way to present yourself, to give people that first impression of you and really be effective with your marketing.

Rob Andress (06:14):

Well, it's very important for the real estate professional, but what happens is the real estate professional starts opening up their life on social media. They start sharing far too much personal information. I can recall a hundred social media posts where I've seen professional realtors on beaches in swimming suits, photographs of their children in front of daycare, pictures of them standing in front of high-end luxury sports sedans, photographs of family members, birthday parties, and they put it out wanting to create connections. But is that the right information to be sharing?

Beth Andress (07:09):

Well, we are all guilty of it, Rob, not just realtors. We know that we overshare, we share about our family, our personal lives, where we're going, where we had dinner, where we're going for dinner, all of that stuff because we have relationships with these people that are on our social media. And for realtors, your business relies on building those relationships with people. You're inviting them into your world so that they know that you are friendly and you are agreeable and you're easy to work with. But that information, all of that personal information, please remember that you are sharing that information with a stranger or 500,000 strangers. Just because you're not meeting these people in a dark parking lot at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night doesn't mean that they are not strangers and personal social media accounts versus business, social media accounts. Rob, are so important, aren't they?

Rob Andress (08:14):

Oh, they are. And I think what ends up happening with many real estate professionals is they receive a friend request on Facebook on their personal page from someone they don't know and they accept it and they allow it in because they think, Hey, maybe I'm going to make some money from this person. Maybe this person could be a potential buyer, possible home seller. So they let them in. They do the same with Instagram on their personal Instagram pages. And I think what sometimes we forget is that we operate businesses and if we look at ourselves and understand how exposed we are, how easy it is for people to reach out and contact us, how easy it is for predators to get information about us. And it's not just about us, it's about our family where we live, the vehicles we drive, the open houses, we're going to the favorite restaurants that we like to go to, the places we like to attend and we share it. We share it with people that we don't know.

Beth Andress (09:29):

And let's back that up for a second. The open houses we're hosting, you are putting a beacon out there that says, this is where I'm going to be at this time for this length of time and I'm going to be there by myself, potentially come see me. And that really is an open invitation to those non-genuine people that are looking to maybe spend some time with you.

Rob Andress (09:58):

And we hear about it all the time. Facebook contacts from total strangers, accounts who have been catfished, where these are not the real people reach out to realtors and set appointments and then the realtor goes, meets the individual. That's our job. We go, we meet the individual and then all of a sudden we find out that there's been a robbery or an attempt at a sexual assault through contacts, through social media. And there's a way that we need to deal with it. And I mean it takes a little bit of effort and it takes a little bit of time. And as we, we've often said that safety within the real estate industry has to start with us. It's not something where we can rely on the industry to provide safety. It has to start with us. And we have to be very, very mindful about it.

(10:51):

And social media is a risk and it's a risk that many realtors don't understand. And another thing, and it's going to be a little bit of a touchy subject when I have noticed in the last couple of years is that real estate is becoming almost a sexual marketing tool that's being deployed by a lot of real estate professionals. And they use it to get attention, to get attention to drawn to them who they are and what they do. My opinion, not that it matters shit for anything, but is that really what real estate is about? Is that the marketing we should be doing?

Beth Andress (11:36):

Well, and that's the thing, we have a few of those discussions a couple of times a year about people being able to post whatever they want on their social media or what their picture that represents them can be whatever they want. And I agree with that. We're all for fashion and showing off who you are. But what you really have to be mindful of is what you are attracting and the kind of people that you are meeting that you are not aware of. And that's really difficult thing to swallow sometimes.

Rob Andress (12:17):

And within social media, it's a topic that's the safety within social media is very rarely ever touched on by leaders within our industry as well. I know there's safety protocols that are put out and some of them are good and some of them are not so good, but social media is something that's really not talked about. And I think today because of a lot of the contacts or a lot of the clients that we worked with, their interaction happens over social media contact. And I believe today that social media is becoming the tool for predators to seek out victims. And because of our industry and because of that need of sharing and creating connections with people far too often we share way too much personal information and a couple of things that I just sort of want to mention with that, and you've done a great job on bringing this up, but I just want to hit it home.

(13:30):

You have a personal social media account, keep it personal. You have a business social media account, a professional social media account, keep that professional and try not to allow yourself to interact or inters, share personal information on your business account. And I'm going to throw a challenge out to a lot of the real estate professionals and here's why, because Beth and I do a lot of work in high schools as well. And one of the things that we challenge students within the high school formats to do is to go down through their social media and find the people they don't know and ask yourself this question, why do I have them on my personal social media if I don't know them? And then I'm going to take your challenge even deeper. You want to do this to your Facebook now I'm going to challenge you to go over to your Instagram and see if you can match the same people. Let's take it one further. Now let's go into TikTok. Let's take it one further. Let's now go into Snapchat. And you may well find that you're going to have the same people on 2, 3, 4 different social media platforms that you operate that you don't even know. And I got to ask, why are they there? Why do you have them there on your personal social media

Beth Andress (15:11):

And the controls, the privacy controls, the different apps, all have ways of letting certain people see certain posts and that kind of thing. Speaking of teenagers, we really want you to be mindful of using those privacy controls. And if you need help figuring out how to use them, solicit one of your local, your neighborhood teenagers, one of your children, somebody that is super social media savvy because we cannot all be good at everything and social media can be difficult. So if you need somebody to help you lock down your social media, find that person, don't be afraid, ask them to help you out. Kids are more than willing to help us old folks out with how to use these things. They, rob,

Rob Andress (15:58):

I'll speak for yourself. And I just could quickly, and I know we're running out of time, but quickly, we get cold contacts through social media. We have strangers reach out to us on social media often now wanting to set up appointments and that type of thing. And we have a program that we refer to as the transparency effect. And I quickly want to engage you with a thought rather than just taking that appointment where someone has contacted you over social media, you set it, you confirm it, and you go, whether it's a showing or a listing or whatever it might be, I'm going to ask you to do something. Get this person's phone number, call them, talk to them before you go. Try and allow your own intuition to hear what it is that they're saying to you. And Beth, you're going to concur with this because we've met so many professional realtors who have used the transparency effect and found out really quickly that the individual that they who had reached out to them through social media did not have true intentions of buying a home. These phone calls go south in a real quick hurry. So get their number, call them, talk to them, find out, ask them questions about what they're looking for, how long they've been looking for real estate, what area of the city that they're looking to buy in. You have a right to reach out, don't be so quick just to take these appointments and run.

Beth Andress (17:43):

Absolutely don't forget that you have just been contacted by a, so understand what that person is, that person is a stranger who you don't know, who haven't spoken to. Understanding who that person is goes a really long way in controlling your safety for sure. And that is one of the safety tips that we want to leave you with today when it comes to your social media. So let's do a quick rolldown of what those tips are. Robbie. Ready? Okay, so you're going to keep your professional page separate from your personal page a hundred percent. Go through your privacy controls and lock down who you want to keep out. Don't share your personal information on your professional pages. Be mindful of the photos you're using in your marketing and remember who are you attracting with those photos.

Rob Andress (18:43):

Can I just interrupt with that one just for a sec before we keep going? Because I read a study and it was a study on online targeting. And what the study ended up finding is from photographs that cute flirtatious photographs that showed a lot of skin, certain poses that created interest from the predator, but photographs that showed individuals who were confident photographs that were not entire full body shots, deterred predatorial behavior. So something to think about, didn't mean to interrupt, but carry on. Hey, that's okay. You got some powerful stuff here.

Beth Andress (19:28):

And I just want to jump in there and say that that is not only geared towards women because we come across many photos of both women and men that are in that first category for sure, Rob. So make sure that all of the people who request access to your personal and professional pages before you accept friend requests or admit them to see your things, check them out, have a look at their social media and see if they meet the criteria of somebody who should be asking for permission to be on your social media. Definitely this is a no-brainer. Don't use photos of your children in your professional marketing. I don't think we need to clarify that. Here's a really important one, Rob. Use the internet and social media as a tool to view the people who have made contact with you. So when you get text messages, when you get emails, when you get that picture of their driver's license, before you take them on a showing, check them out, look at their Facebook, look at their Instagram, find out who that person is. Turn the tables,

Rob Andress (20:41):

Become the stalker.

Beth Andress (20:42):

Absolutely. And let's not forget this last statistic that we want to leave you with today. Over 70% of online stalking will actually result in that predator accomplishing their task of physically meeting their target victim.

Rob Andress (21:00):

70%. Yeah. And that's a stunner and I want everyone to hear that because oftentimes real estate professionals will may be made contact by these people. Things strange start happening, conversations start happening. You may actually end up meeting someone on a showing and have them start touching themselves or saying things to you that are inappropriate. And what do we see happen? We see that realtor publicly smash this person posting their name, posting their phone number, telling the whole story. And the only thing that you are doing is motivating this individual to continue contact with you. It's the same with the text messages, the phone calls, if you answer them, you're negotiating with them. We've heard of female realtors whose spouses or husbands or partners will grab the phone and get into a horrendous screaming match with this person on the other end of the phone. You do this, they're winning. All you're doing is giving them the dominance and control that they seek the best thing to do, cut off contact,

Beth Andress (22:18):

Absolutely. Just block. If you have to tell someone 10 times, I don't want to talk to you anymore, I'm not interested in carrying on this conversation. If you have to tell them that 10 times, guess what? That's nine times more than you wanted to talk to that person for you are done. End the conversation. Block that number as soon as you know that that is not a prospect that you're interested in moving forward with, block the number.

Rob Andress (22:43):

But it's nine times more that they got to speak with you or they heard from you or received a response from you. So cutting them off. You know what, I think that's, that's going to wrap us up on our social media. It's a topic that Beth and I can spend hours and hours talking about. I really hope though, that you pick some things up here or some things that might make you think about your social media marketing. And I want to thank you for listening today. If you might just reach out what? Leave us a review and if you could maybe even share the link to, to another member or someone you know that you might think it might help them out. And I want to thank you. And you know what? I want to thank our producer, Doug from Stories and Strategies as well. Awesome guy. And Beth, I want to thank you very much for today and I hope everyone enjoyed the chat today.

Beth Andress (23:38):

Thanks, Rob.

Rob Andress (23:40):

Bye.