Tag Archives: scams

WARNING: Nigerian Facebook Scams

Posted on by
3

Once in a while everyone who is on Facebook gets a friend request from someone that they don’t know, but with all the recent security issues on Facebook, plus the spamming that seems to be going on constantly, it’s good advice to not approve any friend requests unless you know who that person is.

Recently there seems to be another spate of people wanting to be my friend on Facebook, a number of them from Africa, mainly Nigeria, and we all know the scams that come out of that country by now, or if not we ought to!

Looking at the profiles of these people, they look pretty innocent, but then you see they have friends who look like attractive women, actually a few I noticed today because their photos were sideways, which nobody would do on purpose, so I assume these were selected from a catalog of downloaded photos, with the user not realizing that they would rotate on upload.

The profile pictures in the photo gallery have lots of people mentioned, even though there is only one person in the picture, and it’s an obvious sign that it’s a fake profile, of which there are many thousands on Facebook unfortunately.

Sadly I have noticed that some of my friends have accepted friend requests from some of these, and the most concerning thing is that if as a Squidoo lensmaster I receive a friend request from someone who is already friends with 20 or more of my friends, I am more likely to just approve them without checking who they are.  That would make 21 friends to the next in line who gets an invitation.

I have no idea if there is a scam, if these people just want to get as many friends as they can, or to acquire contacts that they can spam or scam to later, but I think it’s wise to expect the worst.

Scams usually include phony requests for money, but could include sending viruses via rogue Facebook Apps, which nobody wants, right!

So if you get any Facebook friend requests from people that you don’t know, PLEASE check their profile first and make sure that they are someone that you WANT to have as a friend on Facebook, or be prepared to face the consequences later… and don’t say you haven’t been warned…

Article Summary 15th March 2010

Posted on by
1

This is a list of articles that I have written on Associated Content in the last week.   If you enjoy Poetry, Photography and other written works, I hope you will take a look at what I have published:

If you enjoy my writings, poetry and photographs, why not register with Associated Content, and then you can get an email every time I publish something.

Reducing Online Fraud And Email Scams

Posted on by
Reply

It is so easy to fall for email scams these days, especially those that are more sophisticated, and it’s also easy for online fraud to take place if you use a single email address for everything that you do.

You can make the Internet a far safer place for yourself, if you create multiple email addresses and use each for a specific purpose.

You can find a lot of helpful tips on reducing the risk of online fraud and reducing junk mail etc in this useful guide How to Reduce Online Fraud and Avoid Email Scams

Taking this a step further, by registering your own domain, you can add a lot of extra functionality to your email, including never having to change email addresses again, reducing the risk for losing your email account, and having new tools to help organize your email.   This article Make Your Email Stand Out by Registering Your Own Domain provides a lot of information on the benefits of domain registration.

I hope that you find these guides useful, and if so, please share them with your family and friends.