Facebook Scams

So, I’ve written about this before as a note on my Facebook account, but I’ve decided to write about it again here.

Scams are everywhere on Facebook. Be careful what you click on. Here are an example of a few of the current scams on Facebook and what you should look out for.

Facebook Pages Scams:

If you’re on Facebook, you may sometimes see a story in your news feed that a few of your friends have liked a Facebook page. The page usually has a title like “I can’t believe what this girl did… etc.” When you open the page, you are greeted with a message to like the page in order to see the content.

From here, things can go downhill.

You may be asked to click on a number of boxes in order to see the content. What this is really doing is secretly posting an update to your wall and spamming your friends’ news feeds. In turn, your friends do the same and spam their friends as well.

You may also be asked to click on a link, which takes you to an external website and asks you to fill out a survey in order to see the content. At the end of the survey, you are asked to enter their mobile phone number. This signs you up for a premium text messaging service, and charges you a fee (about $2) per message received. This money ends up going to the scammers.

Facebook Profile Views Scam:

An example of a false post
You may see a post similar to this claiming you can see who has viewed your profile.

You may see posts in your news feed these days from a friend claiming they can see who has viewed their profile. The rules for making applications on Facebook states that it is illegal to make an app that says it tracks how many views a profile has, and it is technically impossible for an application to do this. Facebook does not allow applications to track who views a user’s profile. These applications spam friends and return false results. Don’t click on these links. They also lead to more surveys which generate the developers money and spam your friends with these links.

That’s all I have to say for now. Be careful what you click on.

For a follow-up post on this topic, click here

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