How do I know if an agency is scamming me?

The follower scam is the easiest to spot once you know the mechanic. Someone offers 10,000 followers in a week for PKR 5,000, the count jumps, and then your reach falls below where it started. Open your follower list and scroll: empty accounts with no posts, no profile photo and random handles. Those accounts never watch anything, so the platform reads your content as something real people ignore and stops showing it. An account that has been inflated is harder to fix than one that was never touched.

The reporting scam is a designed PDF full of numbers you cannot verify. Screenshots can be edited in two minutes. The fix costs nothing: you should hold owner-level access to Meta Business Suite, YouTube Studio or your Google Business Profile, and you should be able to open the numbers yourself while they are on the call with you. If someone resists that, the resistance is the answer.

The money scam has two shapes. First, three months paid in advance into a personal Easypaisa or JazzCash wallet with no invoice and no written scope — once that is sent you have no position at all. Second, ad-spend markup: you hand over PKR 30,000 "for boosting", PKR 12,000 actually reaches Meta, and you are shown a screenshot of the campaign. The cure is to keep the ad account in your own name on your own card, so every rupee appears in your own billing tab and the agency never touches the money.

The last one is quieter and more common than any of the above: the vanishing act. One person, no cover, and then exams, a wedding, a family trip, or the last ten days of Ramadan, and your page goes silent for three weeks while you keep paying. Ask who covers when the main person is away, and get a name. If the honest answer is that there is nobody, at least price the arrangement knowing that.