Since when did people begin "fishing" with fake facebook pages?

• Fly4Fun

  

  Within the past week I've started to receive facebook friend requests and messages from random girls who just created facebook account. I'm not exactly sure how friending me will help whoever is behind these facebook account glean anything useful... but that makes me even more perturbed about the situation (I don't know why they are doing it).
  
  Does anyone more in the loop of internet scamming/hacking know what the point of this new facebook trend is?
• hasbeen

  

  sound like she totally wants it man!!
  and who's gonna give it to her? you thats who!
• superman

  I received a few of these. Usually they are advertising for some porn site. ie "Hey friends, check out my other profile. (Must be 18 to view the pics.)
• Upper90

  Really???
  
  This trend must be missing me. Thankfully.
• LJ

  

  phishing
• Fly4Fun

  

  superman wrote: I received a few of these. Usually they are advertising for some porn site. ie "Hey friends, check out my other profile. (Must be 18 to view the pics.)

  
  Nah, there were no advertisements for porn, or links. Some of them were just plain profiles... the only one that even seemed the typical suspect links was a message from some random girl somewhere in Africa...
  
  It really has me confused as there doesn't seem to be some obvious form of attack or anything.
• Fly4Fun

  

  LJ wrote: phishing

  Quiet you!
• fan_from_texas

  I assume they're trying to gather information about you to use to hack other accounts (password questions, etc.).
• jordo212000

  

  Haven't got any of these yet. I just keep getting inbox messages to check out "funny youtube videos" with a different link. Its getting aggravating.
• thedynasty1998

  

  My neighbor just had something like this happen. He didn't tell me all the details, but from what I know someone added him. He granted the request and they starting sending him messages about wanting to exchange nude pics or the like. I'm not sure the extent of the conversation.
  
  But anyways, they ended up trying to extort money from him or they were going to tell his wife they were having an affair. They knew where he lived, car, work and phone number, not to mention who his wife is.
  
  He ended up getting calls all the time and threats and had to change his phone number and file a police report.
  
  The police said it's become more and more common that these things are happening.
• Drums of War

  ^^^ Wow!
• baseballstud24

  I got one from a girl in like Russia...She only had like 12 friends and had just started her page. We didn't have any friends in common and I had no idea who she was so I just denied her.
• jordo212000

  

  thedynasty1998 wrote: My neighbor just had something like this happen. He didn't tell me all the details, but from what I know someone added him. He granted the request and they starting sending him messages about wanting to exchange nude pics or the like. I'm not sure the extent of the conversation.
  
  But anyways, they ended up trying to extort money from him or they were going to tell his wife they were having an affair. They knew where he lived, car, work and phone number, not to mention who his wife is.
  
  He ended up getting calls all the time and threats and had to change his phone number and file a police report.
  
  The police said it's become more and more common that these things are happening.

  that's crazy. Guess I am going to have to change my policy. I usually just add anybody who adds me.
• darbypitcher22

  

  In other words....
  
  don't add anybody that you don't know.
• Fly4Fun

  

  jordo212000 wrote:

  thedynasty1998 wrote: My neighbor just had something like this happen. He didn't tell me all the details, but from what I know someone added him. He granted the request and they starting sending him messages about wanting to exchange nude pics or the like. I'm not sure the extent of the conversation.
  
  But anyways, they ended up trying to extort money from him or they were going to tell his wife they were having an affair. They knew where he lived, car, work and phone number, not to mention who his wife is.
  
  He ended up getting calls all the time and threats and had to change his phone number and file a police report.
  
  The police said it's become more and more common that these things are happening.

  that's crazy. Guess I am going to have to change my policy. I usually just add anybody who adds me.

  Ya, that used to be my policy as well... which is what probably led people to this idea I guess. I mean this isn't the first time I've had random people who I've never met randomly add me... so I didn't think twice when it happened the first time about a week ago... but when it happened again, then a 3rd time I definitely stopped. I removed the first person from my friends...
  
  Everything gets corrupted eventually I guess.
• Upper90

  I'm adding EVERYONE right now.
  
  I've got nudes.
  
  JUST SAYIN'.
• O-Trap

  

  thedynasty1998 wrote: My neighbor just had something like this happen. He didn't tell me all the details, but from what I know someone added him. He granted the request and they starting sending him messages about wanting to exchange nude pics or the like. I'm not sure the extent of the conversation.
  
  But anyways, they ended up trying to extort money from him or they were going to tell his wife they were having an affair. They knew where he lived, car, work and phone number, not to mention who his wife is.
  
  He ended up getting calls all the time and threats and had to change his phone number and file a police report.
  
  The police said it's become more and more common that these things are happening.

  Wow! Thankfully, this is not the norm for these people, but that is still terrible to hear!
  
  These are typically men, actually. In the last couple years of doing online marketing, I've become fully aware of who these people are and what they are trying to do.
  
  They are known as "e-whores." What they do is, they pretend to be girls who are all rather similar in demographic. Usually, they are athletic or petite. Typically between the ages of 18-21. Skimpy dressers. Shameless in conversation. Sexually aggressive.
  
  Why? Because they know that a lot of men (and some women) would kill to be friends with such a girl, for obvious reasons. Once they build up a substantial list of friends, they contact you by whatever remote means they can: E-mail (if you have it on your Facebook page, as many do) and Facebook PM being the most common, though telephone isn't outside the realm of possibility, either.
  
  Anyway, in the contact, they usually tell you they want you to get on a particular site for some reason or another (to video chat with them there, to see X-rated pictures of them, to talk to their friend who's even hotter, etc.). They give you the link to the site.
  
  Now, the site is probably harmless, as far as your computer goes. In fact, the site itself is probably legitimate. However, most legitimate business sites (sites that are used to make money) have what is called Affiliate Marketing programs, which means they pay people to do their business for them.
  
  How this translates is that the link you went to isn't actually the site's link. Instead, it is an affiliate link, which means that the site can track who sent you (based on the URL, though cookies have been used to do this too, but again, they're usually harmless). How the site pays its affiliates may vary. It could be that the site uses a program called a "lead gen" program, which stands for "lead generation." How this works is that the signup for the site is probably free, and they'll pay the affiliate a very small amount for someone signing up. Then, however, they'll use the contact information collected during the signup process to market to the individual who signed up. This, in and of itself, is not bad, but it can get annoying. If they run a legitimate business, you'll be able to opt out of receiving the marketing contact rather promptly.
  
  It could be, however, that the site charges a small fee to sign up, and the person who referred you gets a percentage every time someone signs up.
  
  Now, the odds that this will work on a single person are slim. The odds that it will work on somebody within a group of 10K men with Facebook accounts, though, is pretty good.
  
  Hence, these "e-whores" are playing the odds to make money, and they're doing it by using a tool that is free to the public: Facebook.
  
  If you ever get a link in a PM or E-mail from a Facebook friend (even one you know), I'd encourage you to run it through the LongURL website. What that does is, it tells you how many redirects there are in the link (Redirect is a URL that leads to another URL). If there are between 0-2 redirects (1-3 URLs), you're probably okay. Any more than that, and you can be sure that the person has made a real attempt to cover his or her tracks to stay anonymous, which is suspicious at best. If you really know what you're looking at, you can usually contact the site and get the e-whore affiliate cut off without being paid any outstanding commissions (something that really pisses them off).
  
  Fly, you have my personal permission to PM me any such messages you get again. I can then collect some info on the person and either try to get them shut down, or at least tell you whether or not the link is a problem or not.
  
  E-whores are an interesting bunch. The successful ones are almost always men in their 30s-40s, who are obviously shameless enough to pretend to be women.
• O-Trap

  

  Fly4Fun wrote: Everything gets corrupted eventually I guess.

  As long as free social media exists, black hats (affiliates who do less-than-scrupulous marketing) will be looking for new ways to exploit it. The biggest technological victims of black hats I can think of are as follows (in no particular order):
  
  Gmail
  Hotmail
  Craigslist
  MySpace
  Facebook
  Twitter
  
  Each of those has had to put up roadblocks which are inconvenient to the average user because of black hats. A perfect example would be Gmail adding a "SMS validate" feature to people who sign up for a new Gmail account. What that is is something that sends a text message of a numeric code to a cell phone that you have to input into a field before you can use your Gmail account. By doing that, there is a cell phone number attached to the account, making it harder to truly stay anonymous if you wish to use a Gmail account. It's a pain for those of us who don't abuse it, but it's necessary because of those who do abuse it.
• ernest_t_bass

  

  Sorry. I've been bored lately, and have been creating new accounts, advertising my nude photos. I'll stop.
• Nate

  ernest_t_bass wrote: Sorry. I've been bored lately, and have been creating new accounts, advertising my nude photos. I'll stop.

  You are giving freebies out while still charging me?!
  
  How dare you!?!?!
• muffy

  lavendar.
  
  oh sorry, that was another facebook question.
• BORIStheCrusher

  

  I got one too from some girl I didn't know; I looked at her info and she had one friend and nothing written on her wall, and nothing in her info page. Decided to ignore it.
• FatHobbit

  

  I know someone who was bored one night and setup a fake myspace page and then responded to a bunch of craigs list casual encounter adds. I was suprised at the number of people who were sending him pics. I don't know if any of them were real. In my mind it was a bunch of bored old fat guys sitting behind their computers trading porn.
• Shane Falco

  Facebook is for people that didn't get enough of jr hi the first time around!!
  
  "Will you be my friend"?...... please???!!!
• David St. Hubbins

  

  Ive gotten three or four of these. They're all random girls with all male friends, so I assume they're not legit. The one I got today has only one friend.