While facebook is a fun way to meet new people for games, networking, and just plain socializing, you could be giving away more info than you realize. So, you've started playing farmville, cityville, monopoly, etc etc etc... Only 3 of your friends want to play farmville with you.. Well thats a pity, you wont get anywhere with just 3 neighbors! So you go to the farmville page where you see thousands of comments of ADD ME, ADD ME!! So, you do. No harm in this really as long as you're ok with giving away some small bits of info like the city you live in, your birth date, stuff like that. Basic stuff you can get off of anyone's profile.
NOW... We all have friends that post things from status shuffle or little odd questions like...
"PLACE OF BIRTH! Everyone please play! You may find it interesting to know where your FB friends birth places are. Copy & paste this on your profile, then put your place of birth at the end of this sentence... "
Harmless enough right? Possibly.. But think back to your online bank account login you created, or that amazon.com login you made (where you also stored your credit card info). Did either of those sites ask you for a password retrieval question such as "What is your city of birth?" or "Mother's maiden name?" Now, you figure whats the harm, most of my hometown friends know where I was born right? True.. but the random guy you added for cityville didnt, until you just posted it in that status. What could he do with it? Well you must have a bank account somewhere right? On your info page is your email address right? And if I go to your profile page, were you one of those people who saved a user name for your account? Probably something you used for EVERY other page you visit.. including your bank account? But its ok, I dont have the password to your bank account even if i could figure out the login. I mean really, nobody posts pictures of their pets including their names, nobody posts pictures of their car, showing the make/model, and nobody answers those "What city were you born" questions right on their status message... So while i may not be able to figure out your password, with all this knowledge, i could answer your security question, (city of birth, mothers maiden name, name of first pet, make/model of your first car) create a new password and TADA, ur locked out, and i'm in.
Now, this is a FAR stretch someone would have to go to just to access your accounts, but it's do-able. So please, if you add random friends for gaming purposes on facebook, please be careful what info you give out.
A good rule of thumb with social networking sites is that information you would not give to a complete stranger, should not be on your profile or on your wall. Here is a link I came across to a helpful site that shows you how to use your facebook privacy settings if you are one of those people that adds everyone as a friend. http://mashable.com/2011/02/07/facebook-privacy-guide/
Happy Facebooking!
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As always guys, i'm still looking for scam stories or areas you want me to cover. Send suggestions, emails, pictures of scams, etc to weakscamattempts@gmail.com If you send me something interesting it will show up on my blog and you'll be saving me from writers block lol Thanks for reading!!
Tooth Fairy!
10 years ago
