Have you ever received emails from friends or relatives who have denied sending them?
Or, perhaps, others have received emails from you that you never sent?
If so, then it may have been caused by malicious code installed on a social networking profile page.
Spammers create ‘free’ add-ons for profiles, not only because they want to use them to spam other people, but because they also want to spam you!
The nature of social networking sites is such that all the information a spammer needs is readily available.
Profiles give out personal information as well as areas of interest.
The search functions of such sites are designed in such a way that spammers can find victims for their email campaigns with ease.
They will then message them, typically from bogus accounts on the network.
Additionally, they may also compile all the data they have into lists for other spam campaigns, or to sell to other spammers or scam artists..
Avoid This Scam
As ever, such scams can be avoided by limiting the amount of information you put into your profile.
It may also be a good idea to use a disposable email address so that it can be thrown away should you become a spammer’s target.
This is the last of five posts in a series on social networking scams.
Read the rest here -
- Part 1 – The Fake Identity
- Part 2 – Malware
- Part 3 – Profile Hacking
- Part 4 – Identity Theft
- Part 5 – Spam
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This has become a pretty regular thing on social networking sites, especially Facebook. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a wall post or message from a friend that was so obviously a sad attempt at spamming.
To help combat this type of scam (and most other forms of spam), I’d like to invite you and your readers to try out our new service, OtherInbox.
When signing up, each user gets their own domain name (user.otherinbox.com) and they use that to sign up for their various newsletters and online services (facebook@user.otherinbox.com, mediapost@user.otherinbox.com, etc.)
Your inbox is automatically organized and folders are created for each address, allowing you to seperate these emails from your work or personal account. In doing this, you can not only keep these social networking scams seperate from your important correspondances, but you can also locate, manage and eventually block other sites that are spamming you.
We are in private beta, but you and your readers can sign up here:
http://beta.otherinbox.com/signup/scamtypes
I hope you enjoy trying us out, and I look forward to reading any ideas or comments you may have.
~The OtherInbox Team
Yep, that’s true. I remember how successful were first viruses sending e-mails to contacts from outlook. You know sender, you trust him. And you don’t fall into spam filters.
Do you really think it isn’t done automatically? I think it’s better for spammers to send 1 million random mails than spend time on reading one’s profiles and send 10 mails.
Fair comment but targeted spam would be far more effective wouldn’t it?
My point exactly!