If you’re like most people, you like to hang out on Facebook and exchange messages with your family and friends. Watch out! Your friends may not be your friends.
Criminals are targeting your personal details with a deceptive new Facebook scam. This one is especially sinister. It goes after your trust factor.
Here’s how it works:
You’re sitting on Facebook. Suddenly, you get a friend request. Everything is pretty common. It happens all the time.
You probably wouldn’t think twice about accepting a friend request from a familiar face or longtime friend. But you have to ask yourself: “Am I already friends with them?” If the answer is yes, the request is likely a scam by a criminal up to no good.
The new tactic works like this: A criminal re-creates someone’s existing Facebook profile using that person’s profile picture and “About” information. They use the phony new profile to send friend requests to that same person’s Facebook friends.
If you accept, you’ve just given this stranger access to the many personal details on your profile: status updates, location, date of birth and photos. Those simple details, in the hands of today’s cyber criminals, can be used to steal your full identity and wreak havoc with your entire life.
By Kim Komando, excerpt posted on SouthFloridaReporter.com, May 24, 2016
