Comments on: Social Engineering on Facebook – you’re probably already a victim

By: Christine Russell

Christine Russell — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 17:02:51 +0000

This was really helpful! I’ve received 2 spam friend requests through facebook. I looked, and they already had several of my friends as their friend and had listed their college as the same college I graduated from. I felt bad that I didn’t recognize their name. The one I had simply not accepted, and then the other I accepted because of the amount of my friends who were already friends. I went right to this fake person’s page only to find on their wall a message from our college warning that this person was a scam which led me to this article. Needless to say, I immediately removed them from my friends and also reported their profile as being a fake.

Thanks for this much needed insight and warning!

By: 281-Donna Rutherford

281-Donna Rutherford — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 04:04:18 +0000

It is true ” Paula Schmid ” has listed many of my friends as her friends as well. i’m not sure about someone called ” Gee Zee” either. You might also want to look at that.

By: Scott Johnson

Scott Johnson — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:43:33 +0000

It’s true – one of the friend requests I received was from “Paula Schmid”. There were some mutual friends between us, and her college information said that she went to the same school from which I graduated. However, when I contacted each of our “mutual friends”, none of them knew her either. And now, her profile info lists a different college. Pretty clear case of deception. I have contacted the people that I know that were tricked by her, but she has a total of 256 friends right now and I can’t message all of them.

By: Donna Rutherford

Donna Rutherford — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:34:13 +0000

The person who is the fraud here is ” Paula Schmid.” I had ignored this name and kept deleating it everytime it came up, but this person was very persistent and just kept pushing this name, so i added it thinking it was someone I knew. I found out from a friend in Florida, this is NOT the case. I need help here please.-Denise

By: Joyce

Joyce — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 21:49:36 +0000

I’m always amazed at just how ignorant people can be when it comes to traps such as these. I NEVER add a person as a friend unless I know them personally. I also have “friends only” as my options for seeing my wall and pictures. I know the latter isn’t foolproof, but accepting someone who “might” know you is ridiculous. Come on people. Where is your common sense?

By: Aaron Dahl

Aaron Dahl — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:37:30 +0000

Hi Rhonda, I am the author of the article.

Thank you for commenting on this article, it is good to see people reading this. I hope you are more knowledgeable after reading this and won’t become a victim.

The criminals are already privy to these tactics. The people that are ignorant are the potential targets. The reason I wrote this article is to educate you in what to look for so you don’t end up with a stolen car and ask, “how did this happen?”. Knowledge is power.

Everyone knows that the typical bank robber will use a gun. Therefore, banks put up bulletproof barriers. If this wasn’t common knowledge, a lot of banks would be robbed by armed criminals. Criminals don’t rob banks with guns anymore (Well, except for the morons), because banks anticipate it.

If you teach someone how to catch a liar, you have to study what a person does/says when he is lying, which would in turn, teach the student how to lie. Therefore, a book on “How to catch liars” could also be a book on “how to lie”. However, those books don’t necessarily help a liar, it really helps the one being lied to. Writing about how a person hacks your facebook account isn’t going to increase this type of activity, because it’s already in full force. However, it will educate the potential victims. It’s all in how you look at it.

Does that make sense?

By: Rhonda Conway

Rhonda Conway — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:17:24 +0000

Now lots more people will have the information they need to access FB accounts. Huh???