Off-Topic but Important
I think this message is important, especially for industry gurus who use Facebook and similar social networking means to interface with a high volume of friends and/or patrons of their products & services. The bigger the network, the bigger the risks. Scammers have targeted the vulnerabilities of Facebook members to pull all kinds of stunts. This includes identity theft and various evils, from mild harrassment to serious crimes. It’s like taking candy from a baby for these criminals, since a lot of personal info is easily accessible from Facebook accounts.
My Personal Account
I recently visited Facebook and posted an announcement about my guest article on Leangains.com. I’m not very active on Facebook, but I do make it a point to add people with friend requests each time I drop in. I automatically avoid adding people without profile pics. Another thing I automatically do is get suspicious about seductive female profile pics. You know what I’m talking about, those with that “come hither” glamor shot-type of look. Scammers know full-well that the last thing that the average guy can resist is an attractive woman.
I’ll walk you through an actual example of me screening a prospective Facebook friend who might be a fraud. First, take a look at a snippet of my Facebook home page, once the friend request drop-down box is hit. There’s something fishy about the girl’s pic. It’s a little too dreamy, air-brushed-looking, and just out of the ordinary:
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Instead of reflexively hitting the “confirm” button for Venelle Legazpi, I clicked on her picture, then visited her wall. There’s nothing there but pics posted, no updates that would indicate a normal person. Her info page is blocked for privacy purposes. This person had already successfully ‘friended’7 guys, and 3 of them are well-known fitness industry folks. I already sensed a scam, but just to completely close the books on this case, I ran a TinEye.com search on one of her pics. TinEye is a unique type of search engine that retrieves the web location(s) of any image you feed it. The process is super-quick. As a moderator at Bodybuilding.com, I use TinEye to run checks on members who might have fake avatars.
The first step is to right-click on the pic you want to search. On the drop-down box that appears, click on properties. A box will pop up, and copy the URL (highlight it, then hit Ctrl + C). Then, make sure you copy the entire URL on the pop-up box (only part of it is circled in red below):
Once you’ve copied the URL, paste it (hit Ctrl + V) into the URL search field on the TinEye.com home page:
In the case of this suspicious Facebook friend request, 15 images were found of someone named Misa Campo, not Venelle Legazpi. Scam confirmed:
A Google search on Misa Campo yields results that are not necessarily safe for work. Clicking unfamiliar links is a good way to invite viruses & various forms of malware into your computer. If you think you’ve mistakenly ‘friended’ a fraudster, here is a guide to un-doing that move. Anyway, I hope this helps protect some of you out there with big fanbases or lots of incoming traffic on sites like Facebook.
