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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – If you’ve ever received a message from a Facebook friend warning you not to accept a friend request from them because their account was “hacked,” you’re not alone. It’s easy to believe their page was hacked, but it’s likely their account was cloned.

News4JAX Consumer Investigator Lauren Verno sat down with OnDefend Security CEO Chris Freedman to discuss the differences between two popular social media problems circulating the cyber world: cloning and hacking.

Scammers are always “looking for a quick target to clone,” said Freedman “Let’s start with Facebook cloning. Facebook cloning is when someone creates a new Facebook account with your profile picture with information about you that they can find on the web to impersonate you to invite your friends to be their friends.”

While hacking into an account is a little trickier, cloning an account takes no work at all.

Unfortunately, a scammer can clone a profile on any platform, not just Facebook. Even being blue-checked certified doesn’t protect you from potentially experiencing a cloning or hacking situation.