One in five (22%) say they get investment ideas from Instagram, while a similar number get them from Facebook (19%) and Reddit (18%), according to research by Hargreaves Lansdown. Meanwhile, one in six people in this age group get investment ideas from X and the same number from TikTok.

Some of these finfluencers will be reliable, regulated experts posting on social media in a professional capacity. However, many will be people who lack the knowledge and experience to give a complete picture, so risk leading investors astray.

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If you’re seeing this kind of content online, ask yourself whether your expert really knows their onions. It can feel like a social media influencer, operating outside the financial services industry, has uncovered a hack that breaks all the rules of finances to give you a head start. However, they may have misunderstood something — or they’re deliberately misleading you. The same rules apply to us all — higher potential rewards always come with more risk.

A significant proportion of finfluencers are actually criminals, using you to make money. Some will post videos showing luxury lifestyles, and encourage people to sign up to a WhatsApp group where they will apparently share the secrets of investing success. Others use deepfakes of well-known people in the industry, including Hargreaves Lansdown founder Peter Hargreaves or celebrities like MoneySavingExpert.com founder Martin Lewis or entrepreneur Steven Bartlett to get people to sign up to scam WhatsApp groups.

One in five people aged 18-34 say they get investment ideas from Instagram. (gorodenkoff via Getty Images)

These might be “pump and dump” schemes, in which the criminals invest in very small stocks, then they put people under pressure to invest too — in order to push the price up. Once the value has risen, the criminals sell up and run, leaving investors with big losses, and in some cases with worthless stocks. Another version of this approach is to persuade you to pay fees or commission in return for their “tips”.

Investment companies proactively identify any scams using their name and contact social media companies to take them down. However, so-called fan pages are more difficult to tackle.

Social media companies need to make it easier to stop these fraudsters, but in the interim we need to be alert to the risks. It’s worth knowing that Hargreaves Lansdown founders Peter Hargreaves and Stephen Lansdown are not on social media. They don’t have WhatsApp groups and neither does the company. If you see these things, they’re scams.

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More generally, it’s important to keep an eye out for signs of a scam. If in doubt, it’s always better to err on the side of caution, and assume something is a scam. If you’re approached out of the blue by someone offering you an investment, it should ring alarm bells. If you are put under pressure or told to keep quiet about an investment, that’s a surefire sign of a scam.

Be alert to things that seem too good to be true. If someone says they have the secret of investment, or are offering sky-high returns without risk, these are both huge warning signs.

It feels miserable to have to tell people there are no short-cuts to investing success or guaranteed overnight get-rich-quick schemes. However, it’s far less miserable to be the killjoy ruining people’s day than let them fall into the hands of a scammer, causing far worse long-term damage.

Sarah Coles is a personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown and co-presents Switch Your Money On podcast.

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