Over the last few years, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for digital platforms like Facebook – to stay ahead of spammers and those looking to misuse their tools for unintended purposes. Almost every day mischievous online users are coming up with new ways that are sabotaging social media platforms for selfish gains. Lately it would appear that spammers are targeting Facebook groups.

The new kind of spam attack came to the fore, with ‘sabotage members’ joining a range of Facebook groups. These spammers then go ahead to post offensive content to the group members, then reporting said groups, in order to get them shut down by The Social Network.  The social media giant has even gone on record to confirm that several groups have fallen victim and been incorrectly shut down due to this new type of attack.

“We removed several  Facebook Groups after detecting content that violated our policies. We’ve since discovered that this content was posted to sabotage legitimate, non-violating Groups. We’re working to restore any Groups affected and to prevent this from happening again.” a Facebook correspondent.

Facebook groups seem to have fallen prey to Spammers due their growing effort to change their algorithms to provide its users with a satisfactory online experience on its platforms. As they try to improve their content curation and rule enforcement efforts, while also pushing group’s usage, it makes the platform vulnerable and easy to carry out this type of spam attack. A good example of the vulnerabilities presented, is the ability to share a status update to several Facebook groups all at once. This makes it very tempting for ill-intentioned users to join a variety of groups like this, then post offensive content to all of them at the same time.

In a bid to discourage spammers from targeting Facebook groups, many of the groups’ admins are opting to switch their groups to Secret. Secret groups are usually unlisted, making them less vulnerable to such attacks.  Social media experts also agree and recommend going secret as repercussion to prevent spamming on Facebook groups. They urge admins to consider the “Secret Group” options  if at all they are concerned about potential sabotage, which, given Facebook’s groups focus of late, may be worth considering.

Unfortunately, switching to secret may not be an ideal option for businesses that use Facebook groups as an online marketing medium. Clearly, every business would want their groups to be discoverable and easily accessible. The secret option would definitely derail their social media marketing strategies. The only thing that such businesses can do is wait for Facebook to come up with a way to stop such abuse. But given the nature of the attacks, it might take quite some time.

Meanwhile, before a better Facebook groups anti-spam solution, businesses that utilize the groups can try paying closer attention to individuals they are approving for their groups, and keep a close eye on the content posted within them to avoid any potential issues. It may not be a full proof solution but hey, maintaining awareness of your group activity can help weed out potentially harmful content that could violate Facebook’s policies and risk being shut down.

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