There's A Scam For That

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[<p>Are you a big fan of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series? Are you tickled by the thought that the sexy Lady Gaga could be a man? Do you feel you'd like to help Japan in its time of need as it continues to be bombarded with horrific aftershocks and the frightening prospect of radioactive leakage? Well, there's a scam for that.<br><br>Not that this should come as a surprise to anyone. I must admit that from day one I've been extremely wary of all those apparently-fun apps on Facebook that tell you whether your friends think you're good looking, match a colour to your personality, tell you what your name really means, and so on. I'm even more suspicious of games, which thankfully I have no time for anyway.<br><br>But for all those of you who may be "addicted" to Facebook, where you make it a point to take every quiz and play every game that comes your way, here's a home truth: Expert scamsters are leaving no stone unturned to make money by exploiting your habits, from hijacking your whole account and making off with it, to sending you event request, to enticing you into clicking to see an "OMG" video. These exploits are well-crafted and implemented — not like the clumsily-worded Nigerian scams of yesteryear (which nevertheless snare many victims).<br><br>Facebook users also readily take the bait. After the US, the people who fall for Facebook scams happen to be… you guessed it, Indians. That's according to security firm, BitDefender, who used a free account-protecting tool called Safego to study Facebook scam-scape. In their analysis, they show how the hugest number of users get taken in by the "see who viewed your profile" line. This particular scam gathered 1,411,743 clicks. Offers of free iPads, shocking images, videos apparently featuring you, and even fake versions of popular games have been used as part of scams that spike the click through rate to get the scamsters money. Search for BitDefender infographic to see a visual of the stats.<br><br>Recently, a friend of mine kept claiming that her Facebook account had been taken over by someone. I was a little reluctant to believe her, until I discovered there were indeed enough instances where accounts were hijacked or recreated. The cyber-criminal sends out messages to the account holder's friends about some kind of emergency and asks for money to be sent immediately.<br><br>Other scams work by using your interests and behaviour to get you to click on pages set up to use you to spread the scam further and further. The Twilight scam is a recent example. Go ahead and Like the Facebook page for security firm, Sophos. This is a good place to keep track of scams that are doing the rounds. In fact, if you're tempted to click on something suspicious, go check here first. Sophos shows you, in a video, just how you're clickjacked to a fake game page. The user is baited into allowing access to the basic Facebook account information and putting up wall posts. There's also a survey which the user takes to add to the scamsters coffers.<br><br>Scams are being created so cleverly they keep abreast of the news and use what they know to make the content of their bait more realistic. There are many social media companies due for IPOs this year and this fact is being used to come up with scams on sales of unregistered shares. One trader actually tricked investors out of $9.6 million for fake Facebook and Google shares, news reports say.<br><br>Incredibly, according to Security News, there's even a scam that says Facebook is closing down because it can't handle so many accounts. Users who want to keep their accounts alive are lured to click somewhere or the other. Another crazy scam experimented (and did pretty well) with not using a celebrity or anything very dramatic but apparently linked to a video about how students are going haywire while a teacher is turned to the blackboard. "Teacher from behind" being the operative terms here. For heaven's sake.<br><br>If only people would stop for a moment and think.<br><br>Facebook isn't amused by these scams, as you'd well imagine. After all, how would it benefit Facebook if everyone were to get spooked and stop clicking on everything? All that hard work for nothing! Here's what they say: "… (we have) a large team of professional investigators who quickly remove these (groups and pages that violate Facebook policies) when we detect them or they're reported to us by our users. "Facebook says they advise people to be suspicious of anything that looks or feels strange online - whether it's an unfamiliar link in a message from a friend who hasn't contacted you in a while, or a promise of something valuable if you take a certain action or provide personal information. They suggest you keep in touch with the Facebook Security Pages and blog to protect yourself. Meanwhile, they're working on ways of automatically removing scam messages.<br><br>Can't be soon enough for those 600 million users!<br><br>Mala Bhargava is a personal technology writer and media professional. Contact her at mala@pobox.com and @malabhargava on Twitter</p>