Facebook Scams

          Living in the information age can be a wonderful thing. Anything we want to know is at our fingertips. You can communicate in seconds to someone that in years gone by would take months to reply to a letter. You can buy the latest electronic toys from Japan. You can watch countless video feeds of varying levels of appropriate for work-ness. You can be scammed. Very. Very. Easily.

          Gone are the days of writing your own cheque and running. Its far easier to scam people these days, owing to the gullibility of some, and the trust that others put in the gullible. There is a good bet, if youve spotted an obvious scam, youre just plain not the target. The other 10 people that think its legitimate after you are. So are the 10 people that clicked on the free voucher link before you.

          Now we have social media, where a message can get rapidly spread amongst hundreds of social groups, from all over the world. There are competitions to genuinely win lots of free things (Oh my lord even as a die hard androider im sick of being contantly told I could potentially win a new Galaxy SIII). There are videos of amazing things happening. There are videos of people doing really stupid things.

          Then there are free supermarket vouchers.

          Now i dont have a massive list of friends on Facebook. So its a bit of a microcosm of different people of different educational levels, occupations, hobbies. So here and there what I like myself intersects with a couple of other people on occasion, never more than two or three people at a time. But these babies spread like wildfire.

                 "Click here and recieve a FREE $500 Coles gift voucher! Only 168 left!"


          Now before i go further, im going to add, that pretty much everyone that had reposted this as part of the 'deal' had left "Thanks Coles! Luv u guise 4 eva!" type posts. Clearly they are fans of that business, and would therefore have "Coles Supermarkets" liked, right?

          Im a skeptic. I just plain dont click on things like that without doing at the very least a quick check on that businesses (In this case Coles Supermarket, Australias version of Walmart or Tescos) Facebook page. Unsurprisingly the very first post, right up the top of their wall, was the following -

              "WE ARE NOT OFFERING $500 GIFT VOUCHERS. THIS IS A SCAM."


          So being the good lad I am, I put up on my own page this information, thinking surely people would read a post from their friend that says "DONT CLICK ON SUPERMARKET VOUCHERS"

Nope. Still more Likes and Shares and ILU comments underneath.


          Amazingly, it didnt stop with that. A week later it was Woolworths. And the very same people I had asked if they realised they had just been scammed, and ignored that question, did the same dance all over again. Twice in a week, at least a dozen of my friends on Facebook, had allowed themselves to be successfully phished. The second time they had already been warned.

          Now we also need to remember, that that particular type of scam, is actually pretty bloody obvious. All it takes is checking the companies Facebook page, use google (its what its there for, usually right there in the top right of your browser) or even Snopes.com for the more obscure scams. Its not hard to spot that kind of scam.

          But i would also like to make reference to a whole other nastier type of scam, that relies on the trust of the people they are scamming in the person that they are using the identities of.

          There  have been a number of cases of people not being careful with other things they click on, and having their FB accounts compromised entirely. Said accounts have then been used for confidence scams against the friends, with nasty shock tactics.

          These people will hijack an account, then make pleas in the name of the person theyve hijacked who might be out of town, or on holiday, and often not in direct contact with friends or family. They will make claims that they are in some bizarre town in the middle of nowhere and have lost their wallets. They need money wired to a special local account. They need to borrow someones credit card number because they desperately need to pay for an extra bus/plane/train ticket. There have even been reports of posts about people being kidnapped and needing thousands of dollars to have themselves released.

          In these cases, our very humanity is being preyed on, they are relying on the love of the people around the person supposedly in trouble, only for that person to appear days later none the wiser. The awful thing is, what do you do if you friend messages you and desperately needs money? Are you able to call the person who is in trouble? Is there other social media that the person may be using while overseas? Have you set up specific times when you can contact that person somehow and can stall until then?

          But it all stems back to one thing. Being smart. Dont click on everything that looks good. Dont get sucked in to thinking that you can easily get wads of cash or free stuff from a company just by random chain posts. GOOGLE it. Go to the companies websites. GOOGLE it. Keep an eye on posts about scams. EFFING GOOGLE IT.

Ultimately, if it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is.
If the story makes no sense, its likely not true.

You have been warned.

Funkmonkey

Whatis?

Just a page for my insane ramblings, primarily so it doesnt annoy the crap out of people on Facebook. And i tend to whinge a lot.

Havent got anything to gripe about just this minute but im sure ill come up with something shortly. I might put up some of the scams and bullshit ive seen appearing in the news lately. We shall see.... watch this space!