As far as Facebook, it's pretty easy to tell when you're being scammed or trying to be friend requested by a fake profile. I think scammers are getting away with this primarily with younger and older Facebook users versus my generation who are more aware of current viruses and scams circulating the Internet. Although Facebook was designed as a social network to reconnect with friends and meet new people, people should really just become smarter when using it. Don't add people you don't know, don't join groups that are suspicious, and don't respond to suspicious messages from people you've never heard of that circulate throughout facebook, they're a SCAMMER. I personally think to avoid this type of fraud happening to you via Facebook is just to be smart about what you do, who you accept, and what you fall for.
It’s not really a big surprise to me, that frauds discovered facebook for their purposes now. Everybody knows it, tons of people have one, and how easy it is to stay anonymous…. Even if someone realizes you’re just trying to get their money, how unlikely for them to go to the police or even report you to facebook. And even if they do, the possibility that nothing is going to happen is really high… and you have another couple of million potential victims. Nevertheless I have to admit that I never actually thought about it. It never crossed my mind that some of these billions of friend requests we get all the time, of people we don’t know, might actually be more dangerous than “I need another neighbour on Farmville” requests. That’s why I do think it’s important to raise awareness about these kinds of things. They seem obvious, when you think about it (hindsight bias or “I knew it all along“ phenomena) , but there are more than enough people out there that meet other people with a basic feeling of trust, even when it is online. Also I don’t think anyone is 100% immune to these kinds of people. It’s their “job” to figure out your weaknesses, and they are good at it. We might still remember our high school friends, …but 20 years from now? We might not consider trusting someone we don’t really know with our money,…but if we’re desperate for more? We might not usually accept friend requests from people we don’t know, but if he or she seems to be close to someone we’d like to know more about? +on dating websites getting to know people you’ve never met before is what it’s all about. There are thousands of possibilities to get someone to give you their money and I can’t say that I’m absolutely certain it would never happen to me. That’s why I’m glad for these kinds of articles to remind me to keep my eyes open.
Fraud has always occurred but it has since become child’s play with the invention of social networks. People are always so willing to give out information. The ease in which they do is actually quite alarming. You don’t talk to a stranger on the street, do you? Why would you talk to a stranger online? I will never understand the basis of an online relationship, even when it has the potential to meet face to face. You never know what you might get. People will lie, despite the guarantees of safety checks by the sponsoring sites. Another element that serves fraud is curiosity. Many times people will be curious as to who wants to be their friend or how they might possibly know each other. Scammers are professions at manipulation. While they may seem harmless at first, they’ll get you when you least expect it. Although the dangers of fraud on Facebook, or any other social network, are considered to be obvious, people hardly ever want to believe that it’ll happen to them. How often does “I’m being scammed” or “this could be a scam” cross your mind when you confirm that obscure friend request? I’ll be the first to admit, hardly ever. As the person above me said, I’m glad for articles of this nature to remind me to keep my eyes open.
This blog was one that I really enjoyed because it happens so often. I personally have a Facebook and every now and then I will get a request from an odd person, but unlike in this article, the weird ones I get don’t have friends in common with me. It is hard to believe that people fall for this stuff as much as they do, but it happens. I can understand how some people who are vulnerable can fall victim, like the article said sometimes these criminals may have friends in common with you and so on so a person might think “Well if so and so know him then…” It amazes me how savvy these crooks have become to our habits in society and specifically our current obsession with social networks. Some people think that social networks are completely harmless but people need to educate themselves on issues such as this so that we can stop falling victim to ridiculous scams.
I'm glad that this blog was posted because a lot of people can relate to this. Most of us have a facebook and we get friend requests. Some fall for these scams and some don't. I personally don't accept any kind of requests unless they have quite a bit of mutual friends or I can recognize their picture. Other than that, I do not accept them. I think that it's an easy scam to recognize but then again it happens so it was be pretty difficult to catch. Con artists are coming up with more and more ways to steal people's money. For example, Greg told us about people who go to ATMs and gas pumps and put fake covers over the original and put cameras in them and steal peoples information. It's the same thing almost and sadly, it exists and there should be ways to stop it. Since its a social network that runs off the world wide web, which is impossible to control what people are doing. But eventually people will learn about this ongoing scam and soon the con artists will need something new to do and it will end up being a cycle.
I appreciate this post of Facebook fraudulence especially since so many people are very connected. For a scammer, Facebook is like a gold mine since so many people are so CONNECTED, myself included. It's even an eye opener for a current facebook account holder to realize that they are about 4 friends away from being connected to people throughout the world. The personal information that we post and share is no longer considered private and once data enters the web, it remains on the web. There is no such thing as deleting a profile picture. According to your photo albums it may be removed but the file remains within the web realm. For the most part, the deception in facebook scams arise when people add or allows an individual within their facebook pool of friends based simply off the fact that this individual has 1 or 5 friends in common or similar interest that may be important to this person. This scammer then sends request to friends within your friend pool and so on and so forth. Recently this week a "Pastor" living in a foreign country that i still cannot manage to pronounce by "JOHN DOE" added me on facebook. I checked his information to see exactly how this person even knew to type my name in a search to request me. I say this because we had no friends in common. The only thing we shared was our faith and to me that was pretty big so i added him. No more than five minutes later, i recieved a email from a current Texas Wesleyan student who was concerned about a friend request that she recieved from "JOHN DOE". The suspicion that I originally had sky rocketed out of this world. After our brief conversation we blocked this person and informed friends and collegues of the activity taking place. I believe my friend even went as far as reporting his profile as a safety percaution. That is a prime example of how a person can meet someone they have never met but based on common grounds they can accept people into their personal space to have their information exploited, manipulated, and scammed. I believe that we should be able to socialize with who ever is connect to this world wide network for the purpose of sharing, spreading, and recieving information to increase intelligence and awareness of whats occuring in different realms of the world. However, hackers, scammers, viruses and more made this notion impossible to all to place their trust in a shaky social networking system that is filled with so many deceptive frauds. I'm not encouraging the action of social network fraudulence via scamming or hacking, yet i am admitting the ease that we facebookers give when releasing, accepting, or possibly believeing information that is recieved and taking it at whole as truth. This can ultimately lead to terrible consequences. BE CAREFUL FACEBOOKERS!
I referred to the potential scammer that i encountered as JOHN DOE for the simple fact that I dont have absolute certainty that this person was a con artist, however i did have beyound a reasonable doubt to believe that something obscure was taking placeld. So i revealed this information. I'm not absolule so i wont prejudge.
I agree with RamKidd 15 in the aspect that Facebook is an extremely gold pot for a scammer because tons of individuals are so connected and easily fall for scams. I think that the younger generation are the ones that easily fall for such things, simply because they tend to compete one another as to "having a larger amount of friends on Facebook than their friends". My younger sisters fight over this fact all the time, and they just don't realize how easy it is to fall for fake profiles of individuals. Sadly, but true, Facebookers are an easy target for con artists. One of my friends was requested on Facebook by a "guy" whom she thought was extremely cute. After about 2 months of messaging and talking, she ended up going out of state to visit this guy. During their period of talking, my friend fell easily for this person and would send out money for their soon to be apartment. Come to find out, when my friend saw this individual face to face, it was actually a girl. And I agree with Katie, that con artists are finding many ways to steal people's money. Through Facebook, it can be a difficult to identify a con artist because their main purpose is to blend in with your social group to make things easier for them.
I had this exact thing happen to me my first year out of high school. Some random person added me on Facebook but, he was friends with a lot of my friends so I decided what the heck. About a month goes by then he starts writing on his wall that he just got into investing and how much he loves it. Then he started to do everything the article said that he would say, “promises of high returns with little or no risk, sense of urgency, requested that someone pay with paypal, and had numerous testimonials.” Some of his friends were writing back on his wall asking him to see the Securities and Exchange Commission document, and he would just casually avoid the situation. I was just laughing that this guy was trying to do this to a group of friends that were fresh out of high school, so I ended up just deleting him as a friend, and never had to worry about him again.
I agree that it is very easy for fraudsters to scam people using facebook. Sometimes you don’t even have to claim that you are a friend of another friend for someone to accept or start communication with you. This type of fraud is growing in rapid numbers, and I think that the government should address this issue more aggressively, before it spirals out of control. I also agree with Obb6e5f4-de57-11eO-b268-000bcdcb47, when they stated “It is important to raise awareness about these kinds of things.” Due to the fact that there are still people out there that trust other people, at least until they are given a reason to no longer trust anymore. The sad thing is that this is a general rule for some people, even when it comes to meeting others online. I must say that I appreciate articles that address this problem and some even offer you tips on how to recognize, report, and avoid these types of fraudsters and their scams.
Facebook is very popular. The popularity of facebook draws hackers causing fraud and scams to occur. Everyone mentions how this can affect the younger generation, but I tend to believe it can affect the older generation as well. It’s basically putting yourself in a situation of whether or not you want to approve the request or not. Hey if some good-looking man friend requests me I am likely to approve him, this is a default on my part because he could be a criminal or a complete weirdo who is just trying to commit facebook fraud. In reality I would never approve a request on someone I do not know, but this stuff happens. Criminals who are looking to commit fraud are going to go to facebook because on your profile it basically tells everything about you. I agree with Susan Rodriguez, it is true that scammers are professions at manipulation. She also stated, “while they may seem harmless at first, they’ll get you when you least expect it.” That is how it all begins!
Well, I can’t say this article surprises me, considering this type of hacking has affected some of my friends. I have had a few Facebook friends who, aren’t up to date with their Facebook and when they hadn’t logged on for a few weeks, all of a sudden they were tagging some of us with different links stating that they had made a lot of money, very quickly, and it was awesome, and to believe it, because it had worked for them. I obviously knew that this was some kind of scam, and deleted those comments in a hope to diminish the possibility that it had affected my account, however, a few weeks later my e-mail was hacked and looking back on this situation, I am pretty sure the two events were somehow connected. I do allow my friends to see my e-mail, so, if their Facebook is hacked then, my e-mail is/was exposed. It is, however, frustrating to know that some people really have no life, and can just sit in front of their computer and rip off the hardworking and naïve Facebook user. So, all in all I am happy to see an article come out about this, because it really stinks to have your e-mail hacked because you have a social network account like Facebook. :/
This is funny how some people can easily get fooled into these so called "get rich quick" schemes. The funniest thing I tend to find myself doing is when these so people send me these so called "too good to be true" deals, I would conversant with the person and tend to go off on a tangent. Every time they try to get back to the scheme I continue to change the subject. Most of the time, they would either get annoyed or frustrated that they stop replying to my messages. I, personally, started noticing things like this appear back on MySpace. Before the admin started posting blogs about it, I had already emailed three of my classmates when I noticed they were posting blogs to porn sites. I even learned and tested the signs of when a person is trying to fool someone. My favorite one is when they direct someone to a page saying, "your session is timed out log in again". I wonder what the hacker thought when I put in, "Why don't you play" as the email and, "go fuck yourself" as the password. So, I believe if there is a site that a lot of users of different ages are frequent, best to believe, scammers and hackers are going to try to trap unsuspecting users.
in my opinion avid all this frauds is so easy you just have to be selective at the time of accept any request from someone who you do not know, and also is much better if you don't put any of your information in your profile as is your date of birthday, your academic information, where you work at, where you live at, and all that stuff. no one needs to know all that information about you. im agree that Facebook is a social web where you can meet new people and get in touch with your old friends, but be careful, because some where there between your friends could be that person who just want to foolish you and get some money out of you telling you that you will be making a pretty good profit if you get in the some business. come on thats obvious. who is going to make you earn money that easy?
I have to agree with Stephanie, don’t add a person you don’t know as a friend, what you post on your page and don’t join something that looks suspicious. Facebook is just that a social network not a place to talk about giving money or trying to get money from someone you have never met. As to the other websites that are having the same issue, I’m not a big fan of eHarmony. I do not believe that there are background checks done on those that join this site and that is just asking for trouble in my opinion. There are other ways to meet people without giving them your life story up front. The article said that you may get a request from a friend of a friend and yes it does happen, but I don’t understand why someone would add a person they do not know personally. I have also received these types of request but I will not accept the request if I don’t know the person. It is easy for people to fall prey to con artists on these websites but I believe we should be careful what we put out there because you don’t know who is watching.
It isn’t hard for me to believe that con artist have made their way onto Facebook, considering people are constantly being hacked and have viruses controlling their post. However, it is hard for me to believe people are fooled so easily, especially this day in age. I guess since I don’t have to worry about too many or too serious financial issues yet this is hard for me to understand. Why on earth would you trust someone you don’t know that probed from the internet…. The thing that has been evil since it was first invented? I suppose people in desperate need, search for any type of help, shady or not. Especially since there are a lot of establishments like phone repair shops that are scamming tax collectors, not the costumers. The best way to avoid this is to never trust someone that connects to you solely through a social network, it’s a SOCIAL network, not a business promotion.
All I could think about when I read this article was my roommate. She will add anyone and everyone on facebook and contact them even if she has no idea who they are. Hopefully she never falls into a scam, but I think she's a little smarter than that. Unfortunately, that can be said for all people in America. I think that it's easy to laugh and say that people must be stupid to fall for scams, but at the same time, it happens everyday. Yes, most people have a little more common sense than to invest money through facebook, but some people are either naive or desperate for money and don't think the way they should. It's unfortunate that scam artists prey on innocent people that don't know any better, but what can be done about this? Ultimately, it's up to the people who use these networking services to be smart about the decisions they make.
Facebook is going crazy with these kind of con artist....I dont know if anyone remembers when we put cartoon characters up as our default photo...but I heard something about pedophiles creating pages with child friendly pictures and adding kids...scary! I tihnk the safest way for us to use these social netowrks is to not add anyone that we do not know...how can we trust any otherwise? I get requests all the time from "beautiful girls" with only one picture....where they are flaunting their stuff, if you look at their wall, there are no posts from anyone....just their own status updates, now tell me how this person can be real? I had a friend once who accepted this type of request, he communicated back and forth with the person for a few days. The girl invited him over and so he went over there. He told her to come outside, but she then responded, "no just come around the back gate and come through the back door" Kind of sketchy, and pretty scary! I told him he was an idiot for thinking a girl that looked like that would be interested in him, :D ....but he claims he was doing it to see if "she" really looked that way. Pretty scary, but I would advise everyone to make their stuff private for only friends to see, that way, no one can find out about ya if ya dont want them too.
I for one wouldn’t trust anybody on the internet promising me high returns and low risk on anything. Fraud using the internet has got to be one of the crimes that is on the rise fast in America. With all these social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and eHarmony it makes it that much easier for scammers to infiltrate them. Like the article said, all it take is you thinking that this person could be a friend that you’ve somehow forgotten. We are all guilty of this, seeing a friend request from someone you don’t remember, but seeing that you have more than a couple mutual friends and they happened to have gone or go to your high school or college. People always want to blame the website when things like this happen, but they can only do so much. It is up to the user to make informed and smart decision when it comes to someone they barley know urging them to invest money in a stock they’ve never heard of.
Technology is just another tool criminals can use to commit crimes. Technology allows people to scam complete strangers. People who fall for these scams of high returns with an upfront investment are either behind in the technology world or too trustworthy. Some things are too good to be true. Facebook is used across the world and is filled with con artists. They create fake profiles, become friends with a person and then attempt them to buy something or invest in a product. These things happen every day and show that there is a growing need for better protection on the internet.
Technology has become an easy medium for scam artists to send out all their crap. Its smart i must say, expose your scam to as many people as possible to increase your chances of success. But still, why do that? Why not work like a a normal person and make your money that way. It is just another reason why the United States is known as the fat country. We are so lazy and half ass our way through everything. I am guilty of this but I would never steal. My conscience would not allow me and i can't wrap my mind around how others conscience allows them. It is just sad to know this happens.
As far as Facebook, it's pretty easy to tell when you're being scammed or trying to be friend requested by a fake profile. I think scammers are getting away with this primarily with younger and older Facebook users versus my generation who are more aware of current viruses and scams circulating the Internet. Although Facebook was designed as a social network to reconnect with friends and meet new people, people should really just become smarter when using it. Don't add people you don't know, don't join groups that are suspicious, and don't respond to suspicious messages from people you've never heard of that circulate throughout facebook, they're a SCAMMER. I personally think to avoid this type of fraud happening to you via Facebook is just to be smart about what you do, who you accept, and what you fall for.
ReplyDeleteIt’s not really a big surprise to me, that frauds discovered facebook for their purposes now. Everybody knows it, tons of people have one, and how easy it is to stay anonymous…. Even if someone realizes you’re just trying to get their money, how unlikely for them to go to the police or even report you to facebook. And even if they do, the possibility that nothing is going to happen is really high… and you have another couple of million potential victims.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless I have to admit that I never actually thought about it. It never crossed my mind that some of these billions of friend requests we get all the time, of people we don’t know, might actually be more dangerous than “I need another neighbour on Farmville” requests.
That’s why I do think it’s important to raise awareness about these kinds of things. They seem obvious, when you think about it (hindsight bias or “I knew it all along“ phenomena) , but there are more than enough people out there that meet other people with a basic feeling of trust, even when it is online.
Also I don’t think anyone is 100% immune to these kinds of people. It’s their “job” to figure out your weaknesses, and they are good at it.
We might still remember our high school friends, …but 20 years from now? We might not consider trusting someone we don’t really know with our money,…but if we’re desperate for more? We might not usually accept friend requests from people we don’t know, but if he or she seems to be close to someone we’d like to know more about? +on dating websites getting to know people you’ve never met before is what it’s all about. There are thousands of possibilities to get someone to give you their money and I can’t say that I’m absolutely certain it would never happen to me.
That’s why I’m glad for these kinds of articles to remind me to keep my eyes open.
Fraud has always occurred but it has since become child’s play with the invention of social networks. People are always so willing to give out information. The ease in which they do is actually quite alarming. You don’t talk to a stranger on the street, do you? Why would you talk to a stranger online? I will never understand the basis of an online relationship, even when it has the potential to meet face to face. You never know what you might get. People will lie, despite the guarantees of safety checks by the sponsoring sites. Another element that serves fraud is curiosity. Many times people will be curious as to who wants to be their friend or how they might possibly know each other. Scammers are professions at manipulation. While they may seem harmless at first, they’ll get you when you least expect it. Although the dangers of fraud on Facebook, or any other social network, are considered to be obvious, people hardly ever want to believe that it’ll happen to them. How often does “I’m being scammed” or “this could be a scam” cross your mind when you confirm that obscure friend request? I’ll be the first to admit, hardly ever. As the person above me said, I’m glad for articles of this nature to remind me to keep my eyes open.
ReplyDeleteThis blog was one that I really enjoyed because it happens so often. I personally have a Facebook and every now and then I will get a request from an odd person, but unlike in this article, the weird ones I get don’t have friends in common with me. It is hard to believe that people fall for this stuff as much as they do, but it happens. I can understand how some people who are vulnerable can fall victim, like the article said sometimes these criminals may have friends in common with you and so on so a person might think “Well if so and so know him then…” It amazes me how savvy these crooks have become to our habits in society and specifically our current obsession with social networks. Some people think that social networks are completely harmless but people need to educate themselves on issues such as this so that we can stop falling victim to ridiculous scams.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that this blog was posted because a lot of people can relate to this. Most of us have a facebook and we get friend requests. Some fall for these scams and some don't. I personally don't accept any kind of requests unless they have quite a bit of mutual friends or I can recognize their picture. Other than that, I do not accept them. I think that it's an easy scam to recognize but then again it happens so it was be pretty difficult to catch. Con artists are coming up with more and more ways to steal people's money. For example, Greg told us about people who go to ATMs and gas pumps and put fake covers over the original and put cameras in them and steal peoples information. It's the same thing almost and sadly, it exists and there should be ways to stop it. Since its a social network that runs off the world wide web, which is impossible to control what people are doing. But eventually people will learn about this ongoing scam and soon the con artists will need something new to do and it will end up being a cycle.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate this post of Facebook fraudulence especially since so many people are very connected. For a scammer, Facebook is like a gold mine since so many people are so CONNECTED, myself included. It's even an eye opener for a current facebook account holder to realize that they are about 4 friends away from being connected to people throughout the world. The personal information that we post and share is no longer considered private and once data enters the web, it remains on the web. There is no such thing as deleting a profile picture. According to your photo albums it may be removed but the file remains within the web realm. For the most part, the deception in facebook scams arise when people add or allows an individual within their facebook pool of friends based simply off the fact that this individual has 1 or 5 friends in common or similar interest that may be important to this person. This scammer then sends request to friends within your friend pool and so on and so forth. Recently this week a "Pastor" living in a foreign country that i still cannot manage to pronounce by "JOHN DOE" added me on facebook. I checked his information to see exactly how this person even knew to type my name in a search to request me. I say this because we had no friends in common. The only thing we shared was our faith and to me that was pretty big so i added him. No more than five minutes later, i recieved a email from a current Texas Wesleyan student who was concerned about a friend request that she recieved from "JOHN DOE". The suspicion that I originally had sky rocketed out of this world. After our brief conversation we blocked this person and informed friends and collegues of the activity taking place. I believe my friend even went as far as reporting his profile as a safety percaution. That is a prime example of how a person can meet someone they have never met but based on common grounds they can accept people into their personal space to have their information exploited, manipulated, and scammed. I believe that we should be able to socialize with who ever is connect to this world wide network for the purpose of sharing, spreading, and recieving information to increase intelligence and awareness of whats occuring in different realms of the world. However, hackers, scammers, viruses and more made this notion impossible to all to place their trust in a shaky social networking system that is filled with so many deceptive frauds. I'm not encouraging the action of social network fraudulence via scamming or hacking, yet i am admitting the ease that we facebookers give when releasing, accepting, or possibly believeing information that is recieved and taking it at whole as truth. This can ultimately lead to terrible consequences. BE CAREFUL FACEBOOKERS!
ReplyDeleteI referred to the potential scammer that i encountered as JOHN DOE for the simple fact that I dont have absolute certainty that this person was a con artist, however i did have beyound a reasonable doubt to believe that something obscure was taking placeld. So i revealed this information. I'm not absolule so i wont prejudge.
I agree with RamKidd 15 in the aspect that Facebook is an extremely gold pot for a scammer because tons of individuals are so connected and easily fall for scams. I think that the younger generation are the ones that easily fall for such things, simply because they tend to compete one another as to "having a larger amount of friends on Facebook than their friends". My younger sisters fight over this fact all the time, and they just don't realize how easy it is to fall for fake profiles of individuals. Sadly, but true, Facebookers are an easy target for con artists. One of my friends was requested on Facebook by a "guy" whom she thought was extremely cute. After about 2 months of messaging and talking, she ended up going out of state to visit this guy. During their period of talking, my friend fell easily for this person and would send out money for their soon to be apartment. Come to find out, when my friend saw this individual face to face, it was actually a girl. And I agree with Katie, that con artists are finding many ways to steal people's money. Through Facebook, it can be a difficult to identify a con artist because their main purpose is to blend in with your social group to make things easier for them.
ReplyDeleteI had this exact thing happen to me my first year out of high school. Some random person added me on Facebook but, he was friends with a lot of my friends so I decided what the heck. About a month goes by then he starts writing on his wall that he just got into investing and how much he loves it. Then he started to do everything the article said that he would say, “promises of high returns with little or no risk, sense of urgency, requested that someone pay with paypal, and had numerous testimonials.” Some of his friends were writing back on his wall asking him to see the Securities and Exchange Commission document, and he would just casually avoid the situation. I was just laughing that this guy was trying to do this to a group of friends that were fresh out of high school, so I ended up just deleting him as a friend, and never had to worry about him again.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is very easy for fraudsters to scam people using facebook. Sometimes you don’t even have to claim that you are a friend of another friend for someone to accept or start communication with you. This type of fraud is growing in rapid numbers, and I think that the government should address this issue more aggressively, before it spirals out of control. I also agree with Obb6e5f4-de57-11eO-b268-000bcdcb47, when they stated “It is important to raise awareness about these kinds of things.” Due to the fact that there are still people out there that trust other people, at least until they are given a reason to no longer trust anymore. The sad thing is that this is a general rule for some people, even when it comes to meeting others online. I must say that I appreciate articles that address this problem and some even offer you tips on how to recognize, report, and avoid these types of fraudsters and their scams.
ReplyDeleteFacebook is very popular. The popularity of facebook draws hackers causing fraud and scams to occur. Everyone mentions how this can affect the younger generation, but I tend to believe it can affect the older generation as well. It’s basically putting yourself in a situation of whether or not you want to approve the request or not. Hey if some good-looking man friend requests me I am likely to approve him, this is a default on my part because he could be a criminal or a complete weirdo who is just trying to commit facebook fraud. In reality I would never approve a request on someone I do not know, but this stuff happens. Criminals who are looking to commit fraud are going to go to facebook because on your profile it basically tells everything about you. I agree with Susan Rodriguez, it is true that scammers are professions at manipulation. She also stated, “while they may seem harmless at first, they’ll get you when you least expect it.” That is how it all begins!
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ReplyDeleteWell, I can’t say this article surprises me, considering this type of hacking has affected some of my friends. I have had a few Facebook friends who, aren’t up to date with their Facebook and when they hadn’t logged on for a few weeks, all of a sudden they were tagging some of us with different links stating that they had made a lot of money, very quickly, and it was awesome, and to believe it, because it had worked for them. I obviously knew that this was some kind of scam, and deleted those comments in a hope to diminish the possibility that it had affected my account, however, a few weeks later my e-mail was hacked and looking back on this situation, I am pretty sure the two events were somehow connected. I do allow my friends to see my e-mail, so, if their Facebook is hacked then, my e-mail is/was exposed. It is, however, frustrating to know that some people really have no life, and can just sit in front of their computer and rip off the hardworking and naïve Facebook user. So, all in all I am happy to see an article come out about this, because it really stinks to have your e-mail hacked because you have a social network account like Facebook. :/
ReplyDeleteThis is funny how some people can easily get fooled into these so called "get rich quick" schemes. The funniest thing I tend to find myself doing is when these so people send me these so called "too good to be true" deals, I would conversant with the person and tend to go off on a tangent. Every time they try to get back to the scheme I continue to change the subject. Most of the time, they would either get annoyed or frustrated that they stop replying to my messages. I, personally, started noticing things like this appear back on MySpace. Before the admin started posting blogs about it, I had already emailed three of my classmates when I noticed they were posting blogs to porn sites. I even learned and tested the signs of when a person is trying to fool someone. My favorite one is when they direct someone to a page saying, "your session is timed out log in again". I wonder what the hacker thought when I put in, "Why don't you play" as the email and, "go fuck yourself" as the password. So, I believe if there is a site that a lot of users of different ages are frequent, best to believe, scammers and hackers are going to try to trap unsuspecting users.
ReplyDeletein my opinion avid all this frauds is so easy you just have to be selective at the time of accept any request from someone who you do not know, and also is much better if you don't put any of your information in your profile as is your date of birthday, your academic information, where you work at, where you live at, and all that stuff. no one needs to know all that information about you. im agree that Facebook is a social web where you can meet new people and get in touch with your old friends, but be careful, because some where there between your friends could be that person who just want to foolish you and get some money out of you telling you that you will be making a pretty good profit if you get in the some business. come on thats obvious. who is going to make you earn money that easy?
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Stephanie, don’t add a person you don’t know as a friend, what you post on your page and don’t join something that looks suspicious. Facebook is just that a social network not a place to talk about giving money or trying to get money from someone you have never met. As to the other websites that are having the same issue, I’m not a big fan of eHarmony. I do not believe that there are background checks done on those that join this site and that is just asking for trouble in my opinion. There are other ways to meet people without giving them your life story up front.
ReplyDeleteThe article said that you may get a request from a friend of a friend and yes it does happen, but I don’t understand why someone would add a person they do not know personally. I have also received these types of request but I will not accept the request if I don’t know the person. It is easy for people to fall prey to con artists on these websites but I believe we should be careful what we put out there because you don’t know who is watching.
It isn’t hard for me to believe that con artist have made their way onto Facebook, considering people are constantly being hacked and have viruses controlling their post. However, it is hard for me to believe people are fooled so easily, especially this day in age. I guess since I don’t have to worry about too many or too serious financial issues yet this is hard for me to understand. Why on earth would you trust someone you don’t know that probed from the internet…. The thing that has been evil since it was first invented? I suppose people in desperate need, search for any type of help, shady or not. Especially since there are a lot of establishments like phone repair shops that are scamming tax collectors, not the costumers. The best way to avoid this is to never trust someone that connects to you solely through a social network, it’s a SOCIAL network, not a business promotion.
ReplyDeleteAll I could think about when I read this article was my roommate. She will add anyone and everyone on facebook and contact them even if she has no idea who they are. Hopefully she never falls into a scam, but I think she's a little smarter than that. Unfortunately, that can be said for all people in America. I think that it's easy to laugh and say that people must be stupid to fall for scams, but at the same time, it happens everyday. Yes, most people have a little more common sense than to invest money through facebook, but some people are either naive or desperate for money and don't think the way they should. It's unfortunate that scam artists prey on innocent people that don't know any better, but what can be done about this? Ultimately, it's up to the people who use these networking services to be smart about the decisions they make.
ReplyDeleteFacebook is going crazy with these kind of con artist....I dont know if anyone remembers when we put cartoon characters up as our default photo...but I heard something about pedophiles creating pages with child friendly pictures and adding kids...scary! I tihnk the safest way for us to use these social netowrks is to not add anyone that we do not know...how can we trust any otherwise? I get requests all the time from "beautiful girls" with only one picture....where they are flaunting their stuff, if you look at their wall, there are no posts from anyone....just their own status updates, now tell me how this person can be real? I had a friend once who accepted this type of request, he communicated back and forth with the person for a few days. The girl invited him over and so he went over there. He told her to come outside, but she then responded, "no just come around the back gate and come through the back door" Kind of sketchy, and pretty scary! I told him he was an idiot for thinking a girl that looked like that would be interested in him, :D ....but he claims he was doing it to see if "she" really looked that way. Pretty scary, but I would advise everyone to make their stuff private for only friends to see, that way, no one can find out about ya if ya dont want them too.
ReplyDeleteI for one wouldn’t trust anybody on the internet promising me high returns and low risk on anything. Fraud using the internet has got to be one of the crimes that is on the rise fast in America. With all these social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and eHarmony it makes it that much easier for scammers to infiltrate them. Like the article said, all it take is you thinking that this person could be a friend that you’ve somehow forgotten. We are all guilty of this, seeing a friend request from someone you don’t remember, but seeing that you have more than a couple mutual friends and they happened to have gone or go to your high school or college. People always want to blame the website when things like this happen, but they can only do so much. It is up to the user to make informed and smart decision when it comes to someone they barley know urging them to invest money in a stock they’ve never heard of.
ReplyDeleteTechnology is just another tool criminals can use to commit crimes. Technology allows people to scam complete strangers. People who fall for these scams of high returns with an upfront investment are either behind in the technology world or too trustworthy. Some things are too good to be true. Facebook is used across the world and is filled with con artists. They create fake profiles, become friends with a person and then attempt them to buy something or invest in a product. These things happen every day and show that there is a growing need for better protection on the internet.
ReplyDeleteTechnology has become an easy medium for scam artists to send out all their crap. Its smart i must say, expose your scam to as many people as possible to increase your chances of success. But still, why do that? Why not work like a a normal person and make your money that way. It is just another reason why the United States is known as the fat country. We are so lazy and half ass our way through everything. I am guilty of this but I would never steal. My conscience would not allow me and i can't wrap my mind around how others conscience allows them. It is just sad to know this happens.
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