I occasionally get a friend invitation on Facebook from a total stranger, someone who by all appearances is a non-existent person. The person is, in my case, always female, young, very attractive, and the picture looks like it could be lifted from a russian mail order bride website.
My question is, what is the point of these invitations? Or for that matter, the facebook profile itself?
I just received one today, and the profile is obviously fake. However, she has a number of friends already. I assume these friends are phonies as well, or people who just grant any and all friend requests without really looking at who the person is. I have never been asked to be friends by an unattractive guy, so there seems to definitely be a strategy for whatever it is these people are trying to do.
I think that typically once you friend them, they start posting spam for their webcam site (or whatever) on your Wall.
You would be surprised how many people just automatically approve any and all friend requests. I have seen a few complaints by women on a parenting message board I go to about “trashy women who are trying to pick up their husband on Facebook” and it’s always these webcam spammers.
Yeah. I tend to rather compulsively report these as inappropriate. Lately I’ve been getting friend requests from strangers without even that sort of spam on their wall, but I suspect it’s still some sort of pornyspam scheme.
My guess is the plan is to build up a decent list of friends before starting with the spamming. It allows them to reach more people before getting shut down. Or, maybe they’re sending private messages with spam after you connect to them. It’s a pretty common abuse pattern across the Internet – create fake accounts, populate them with innocent looking activity for a while to build reputation/connections, and then start using them to spam/defraud people. (Taking over an existing legit user’s account is usually even more effective, but also a lot more difficult).
Some are now restricting their wall to their friends, so you only see their SPAM if you add them. That way they get less reports.
And has anyone else tried not letting their sex be visible? Combined with tweaking my privacy settings, and rarely if ever adding applications, I have yet to see any more of these annoying spammers. knock on wood
Collection agencies use Facebook and similar social networking sites to get info on deadbeats. This practice is of dubious legality, but the collection agencies do it anyway. Are you a deadbeat, SFP?
The person is, in my case, always female and the picture looks like it could be lifted from a russian mail order bride website. However, she has a number of friends already.
I received my particular e-mail/FB invite from Ashley Regan- I never heard of her. Immediately suspect, I viewed her “friends list” and it was 113 strong. And all of them male, adding to the comedy! Maybe people are that desperate? They see a hot girl and just ‘accept’ hoping they’ll get laid or at least pop a finger. I am going to do as Big T has suggested and not list my sex!
Well, I just checked and I have three requests. None from young females. One from a 70+ year old woman I know quite well, but I am not interested in seeing photos of her grandchildren, one from Penn reunions, which interests me not at all and third from someone named John Varrone whom I have never heard of and includes no photo. It is the last that I wonder about.
One thing I am curious about. How does this “person” get my name in the first place? Does facebook permit applications to mine their data to pull user names to send friend requests? They must, because there is no way they could do bulk spamming without being able to do so.
The question then goes to facebook. Are they being paid by these spammers to permit them to send friend requests? They should be able to stop data mining apps. if they want to. I’m thinking they don’t want to.
I’ve actually gotten a couple since that post, but that’s much less frequent than it used to be. I think it helps that my name is not that common, and thus most computers will not guess my gender correctly.
Do please report and block these people, BTW. It doesn’t always work, but I’ve seen a few have to take down their page.
You can set your settings tight enough that your name is not searchable on facebook which might help cut down on the spam ads. You can also change who can send you friend requests from Everyone to Friends of Friends. Basically, I recommend you spend a good 15 minutes exploring all the functions in the privacy section of your account page. You can do a lot to reduce access to your profile, including turning off games and automatic login.
I once got a friend request from someone I didn’t know – the problem was that I getting a lot of old school friend requests at the time and I was generally just hitting accept and figuring I’d work it out later.
Shortly after accepting the random one, I worked out I didn’t know her and unfriended her – I think I might have even sent a note saying I’d been mistaken.
A day or so later I got locked out of GMail because someone had tried a brute-force password attack on it. My GMail address was visible to my FaceBook friends at the time.
It wouldn’t take much skill to write something that generates friend requests, waits for acceptance, harvests the e-mail address and some likely passwords (significant other, favourite band, whatever) and throw them at the appropriate webmail until it gets locked out. Probably a very small chance of it working but if you spam enough people you’ll probably get a couple of usable accounts.
These two event may be completely unrelated, but I certainly tweaked my privacy settings and opted to be more selective with who I accept.
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