How to check if a collaboration offer is a scam

If you publish content on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or any other social network, you may sooner or later receive a message like this:

“Hello! We love your content and believe you fit perfectly with our brand. We want to send you free products and pay you to collaborate with us.”

And yes, a brand may have noticed you. But it may also not be the case.

Fake collaboration offers use names and logos of real companies to try to get money, personal data, or access to your accounts. In fact, organizations like INCIBE have already warned about fake offers that arrive through WhatsApp, Telegram, and private messages on social networks.

The good news is that there are several things you can check before accepting.

Before getting excited about the collaboration, check who is writing to you

Just because the profile has a company’s logo doesn’t mean it belongs to that company.

A fake account can copy photos, description, posts, and even a brand’s name to appear authentic.

Look at the profile calmly

Check:

• The exact username.
• When they started posting.
• If their posts seem consistent.
• If the brand links that account from its official website.
• If they have other social networks and they match each other.

Followers or the number of posts can give you clues, but they are not definitive proof. Followers can also be bought, or posts can be copied from a real account. An apparently perfect account can also be fake.

Check the email

If the conversation moves to email, don’t just look at the name that appears as the sender.

Imagine you receive an email from:

collaborations.formaler@gmail.com

The name may say “Formaler Collaborations”, have a perfect logo, and a professional signature. But that doesn’t prove that Formaler sent the message.

A company may use different addresses to manage collaborations, so a Gmail doesn’t prove by itself that there is a scam. The important thing is to check if that address is really linked to the company.

If you receive a message from a corporate domain, also look for small changes:

@brand.com
@brand-collabs.com
@branda.com

At first glance, they may look the same.

And be careful: even the sender’s address can be faked through email spoofing. This technique allows making an email appear sent from a legitimate address, even though it actually comes from someone else. That is, you can see the name and email of a known brand as the sender, and yet the message may not have been sent by them.

Search for the person who says they are contacting you

If someone introduces themselves as:

“Laura, Influencer Marketing Manager at X”

look for them.

You can check the company’s website, LinkedIn, and other public sources to see if that person exists and really works there.

But there’s an important detail: finding Laura on LinkedIn doesn’t confirm that you’re talking to her. A scammer can use the name of a real employee.

That’s why, if you have doubts, take one more step.

Contact the brand yourself

Look for the company’s official website and use the contact details you find there, not the phone, email, or link included in the suspicious message.

You can ask something as simple as:

“I received a collaboration proposal from this address. Can you confirm if it belongs to your team?”

It’s one of the most reliable ways to verify a collaboration. The FTC precisely recommends confirming the offer directly with the company using contact information obtained by another means.

Search the offer on Google

Before responding, take two minutes to search:

brand name + collaboration scam
brand name + influencer scam
sender’s email + scam

You can even copy some particularly striking phrase from the message in quotes.

If the same text has reached hundreds of people, you may quickly find comments, posts, or warnings from other victims.

Be careful if you have to pay to “collaborate”

This is probably one of the clearest warning signs.

They offer you €500 for creating two videos, but first, you have to pay €30 for shipping costs. Or buy the product and they promise to refund you later.

Not all campaigns work the same, and there are agreements where the creator buys or tests certain products. But if a supposedly very attractive collaboration starts by demanding money from you, investigate it especially well.

Be even more suspicious if they ask you to make payments through:

• Gift cards.
• Cryptocurrencies.
• Transfers to individuals.
• Unknown payment platforms.

A collaboration should make it clear from the beginning what you will receive, what you must do, and what the conditions are.

Do not share more data than necessary

To close a real collaboration, certain administrative or billing data may end up being necessary. That doesn’t mean you should provide them as soon as you receive a DM.

A supposed brand shouldn’t need your Instagram password, verification codes, card PIN, or email credentials to hire you.

If they send you a page to “log in with Instagram” or “verify your account”, don’t enter your data without first checking where you are.

You could be facing a phishing attempt designed to steal access to your social networks.

Do not open files or links without checking them

“Here is the briefing.”
“Download the contract.”
“Enter our platform to accept the campaign.”

All seem perfectly normal reasons to send you a link or file. And precisely for that reason, they work so well as bait.

Before clicking, check the domain the link leads to. If you don’t recognize it, search for the company’s website on your own.

And remember something important: that a website has https:// and the lock appears doesn’t automatically mean it’s legitimate. HTTPS protects the connection with that page, but a website created for phishing can also use it. To better understand what it guarantees and what it doesn’t, you can check our article on what an SSL certificate is and why you need it.

Hurry is also a warning sign

“We need confirmation today.”
“Only two spots left.”
“Send us your data within the next hour.”

A real campaign can have deadlines. What’s strange is that they don’t allow you to check anything, ask questions, or read the conditions.

The pressure seeks to make you decide before thinking.

If an offer ceases to exist because you needed ten minutes to check who is writing to you, it probably wasn’t an opportunity you wanted to accept.

Checklist: check a collaboration in 2 minutes

Before saying yes, do this small check:

Check	All good?
Does the profile seem genuinely linked to the brand?
Have you checked the full email address?
Does the person contacting you actually exist?
Can you confirm the proposal through an official channel?
Have you searched the message or sender online?
Are the terms of the collaboration clearly stated?
Are they asking you for money upfront?
Do the links and files seem legitimate?
Are they asking for passwords or access codes?

If several answers raise doubts, do not proceed until verifying the offer.

And if you have already fallen for a fake collaboration?

Do not immediately delete the conversation.

Save messages, emails, usernames, web addresses, receipts, and screenshots. They can serve as evidence.

Then, depending on what has happened:

• Change any passwords you may have compromised.
• Enable two-step authentication.
• Contact your bank if you have provided financial information or made any payments.
• Inform the brand that is being impersonated.
• Report and block the account on the platform.

And if they have managed to access any of your accounts, act as soon as possible. The longer they maintain access, the more chances they have to change your data, contact your followers, or use your own identity to deceive others.

A good collaboration starts by knowing who you are talking to

Receiving your first proposal from a brand is exciting. And you don’t need to turn every message into a police investigation.

Just get used to pausing for a moment before clicking, paying, or sharing information.

Check the profile, search for the person, review the email, and when something doesn’t add up, ask the brand directly.

In the end, taking care of your online presence also means deciding who you trust and protecting everything you are building online. At cdmon, we believe that having control of your digital identity is a fundamental part of having your own space on the Internet.

It can also look like a job offer

This type of scam is not limited to collaborations with brands. There are also fake job offers aimed at people who have a public profile on LinkedIn.

The message is usually very well-crafted: it mentions your experience, assures that they found your profile on LinkedIn, and presents an opportunity that seems made for you. Then, they may ask you to continue the conversation on WhatsApp or Telegram, download a file, access a platform, or share personal and banking data.

That the message includes real information about you doesn’t prove that the offer is legitimate. That data may have been obtained directly from your public profile.

To verify it, follow the same steps as for a collaboration:

• Carefully review the email domain.
• Search for the person who claims to work at the company.
• Check if the vacancy appears on the official website.
• Contact the company using a channel you found yourself.
• Do not download files or share documentation until verifying the offer.