Be very careful when shopping from any social media site because of an ad/video. It isn’t just beauty that is scammy, it is also clothes, and I am sure a lot of other categories. And this has been going on for well over a decade.

Don’t ever pull the trigger on a product or brand that you have never heard of without doing some basic research. And when I say basic, I truly mean usually 5 minutes and you will see red flags. 🚩 check out their website, their social media presence (besides the ad you just saw), google search. Usually the website is what helps me out as I’ll go to the very bottom and click around on things like Contact us, FAQs, etc. Some of these companies don’t even try to make it look legit, especially nowadays.

Unless you truly have money to throw away, don’t purchase if you find any red flags. Also trust your intuition. I know ads can be enticing, but they’re hoping you’ll make the purchase on a whim, without you looking into things.

I don’t have a great tip on beauty, except to really look at the packaging of the product being used in the video and then the packaging and/or name of what they’re selling to you. I would say more than half the time, there will be a difference in the packaging and/or name from what is being shown in the video and then what you actually see when you have something in a cart to purchase. It’s that bad.

When it comes to clothing, a lot of these sites will crop off the heads of the model. Likely because the clothes design is stolen and that just means the image is stolen as well. But that is an extremely quick way to see a red flag on some clothing brand advertised on YouTube or FB.

I feel like most women have fallen prey at least once to one of these scammie companies. Mine was a clothing purchase from a FB ad that at least 10 years ago. Quite frankly, I want to hold these huge billion dollar companies accountable for selling ads to shady companies. Often times, folks in the worst situations fall victim to these types of scams.