Something I became dimly aware of is the existence of fake FB accounts that seem to have no current use, but have the mark of nefarious purpose.
I while ago, a few posts I made on a local interest group on FB garnered likes from someone I had never heard of, and on checking had a clearly fabricated identity. Picture was a a passably attractive young woman, but strangely odd looking. Intrigued, a Google search on the picture turned up a set of pictures from a scam Russian dating site. It looked as if they had been simply lifted from there. (The odd looking bit was that the pictures had had the "beautifying filter applied - makes the eyes bigger etc.) Said account of FB had a number of friends - all middle ages males.
Then more recently I stumbled across another account - another anonymous but attractive young woman’s picture, and, in common with the above account, a set of utterly stupid interests - all US football teams. (I’m in Australia.) But, and here is the disturbing thing, the account name, and personal details (such as they were) matched those of a friend from university days a few decades ago. Correct university, profession, employment. The name is unusual enough that there is zero chance this is a coincidence. So either my long lost friend had her account highjacked and didn’t care (possible, but it is a newish account) or someone has found a few snippets of personal information and created the fake account.
OK, long story. But what is the point? It sort of looks as if there is some attempt to create false identities to attract sad middle aged men. (Maybe to parley to a fake Russian dating service to have their wallets lightened.) But not much seems to happen, and despite getting a few “likes” on random posts, I have seen little else*.
Anyone seen much similar? Any war stories? (Had your wallet lightened by a fake Russian dating service?) Any known scam mechanisms that are documented? A very long game being played?
*This sad middle aged man is quite adept at lightening his own wallet without needing any help.
There are any number of scam opportunities for accounts with many FB friends. People create these accounts, spend time building up their networks and either run scams or sell them to people who run scams. There are many ways of populating these accounts, sometimes they just clone data from accounts where the information is open to the public.
Unscrupulous companies and celebrities will self-promote by bumping the number of followers they have, so they will buy or lease fake profiles. This is more of an issue on Twitter, where a recent report suggested that 15 percent of the profiles are ‘bots’, but I guess it happens on FB as well. It’s a weird world out there.
I get friend requests from middle-aged gentlemen, usually ex-US military, where there are only a few posts, mostly nice photos of them looking incredibly respectable. Clearly fake.
I assume this is the same thing - populating the friend lists of fake people. But from the above, it does sound like they are demographically targeted. I wondered who would be happy to spend their time doing this, but are they human or computer generated?
That’s been a thing for quite some time. The motives behind the attractive person you don’t know who friends you on facebook are as numerous as they are for any online scam: advertising, trolling, collecting information, loonies, etc.
Detectives, debt collectors and stalkers have used that strategy to get into someone’s inner circle and get more information about them. Spammers have used it to advertise for their websites or products. Trolls have used it just to see how many middle-aged guys they can embarrass by getting them to friend an attractive photo with no other information. It could be anything but it isn’t ever genuine.
Thank you, Crazyhorse. I can’t imagine being interesting enough to bother, but I guess sometimes it isn’t specifically me as much as I got caught in a shotgun approach. What you say makes sense.
But that’s not to say there isn’t a minute chance they are genuine in some cases… some people approach facebook like a dating site and if they see a photo they like they might try to strike up a conversation. The scammers are preying on that very tendency. But it’s always wise to consider how much you actually know about the person behind the account (absolutely nothing)
A total stranger asking to be facebook friends is essentially the same as a random stranger on the street asking you to tell them where you live and work, who you’re friends with, what you’re interested in, and gives them a launching point to begin trying to wheedle their way into the inner circles of all your friends and family too.
The problem that I have found is that sometimes people send a friend request and it seems (from what I can see on their account) that I have no common friends and they have almost nothing showing on their account. If I do a Google or some other check, or just decide to take the risk, by accepting the friendship request, suddenly heaps of posts appear and I can see that there are common interests relating to one of the books I have written.
Is that to do with privacy settings set such that only friends can see anything?
Ah well if you are a public figure, or at least well known in your circles then it would tend to be more possible that it is a fan or someone with a similar background who heard of you.
But in that case I’d think they would send a private message of introduction, or an email, or somesuch instead of just a random friend request that you’d be likely to be sceptical about.
But yes that is just an effect of various privacy settings in facebook - some people make every post public and open their account to the entire world to view and others set most content to only be visible to friends. If you think you could benefit by accepting such requests you can honker down all your facebook security settings so that even friends can’t see much about you, but then it starts to raise the question ‘why use facebook?’
You might consider making a public page since you’re an author and then you can separate those types of contacts from your actual personal friends and family.
I do have an author page as well, but people seem to prefer the personal page and I don’t want to offend them - some have turned out to be hugely interesting.
Sorry to take so much of your time and expertise. But also relating to the OP. What is the danger in accepting a friend request from a fake FB non-person? I have nothing to hide - well, nothing that I put on Facebook!
Well the OP is a different kind of random friend request than you’re talking about but in that case, a fake account with an attractive person being used as bait, the actual danger it presents depends on their motives and your facebook settings.
You could share almost nothing or almost everything with a total stranger. From a totally unlocked facebook account one could glean more than enough information for an identity thief, romantic stalker/deranged lunatic, cyber criminal, etc. to learn your full name, DOB, alma mater, work history, family ties, etc and use that information to cause you some harm or another. How dangerous people getting that information is depends entirely on what they hope to do with it, but it would generally not be beneficial to you in any case.
Personally, I would put something on my fan page saying if you want to know more please message me - I don’t accept random friend requests on my personal account, or something maybe a little more diplomatic along those lines and keep my personal account reserved to only real life friends.
But in short, if you don’t share anything at all that you don’t mind the public at large knowing letting someone into your friends list probably doesn’t present a grave danger, however it also gives them the names of other friends and family and all that potentially private information about them too. (again, depending on your and their facebook settings)
