Rogue Facebook Friend Requests and How to Keep From Being Taken Advant…

What to do when you get a friend request from someone you dont know, and there are no shared friends? Or someone from a group or game you are active on? Or a friend of a friend who makes no sense as to why a request would come? Or from someone you know you are already friends with? Think before accepting – adding people for the sake of adding people is pretty certain youll find issues pop up – youll be cloned (someone will set up a new FB profile, pretending to be you, complete with your photo and personal information lifted from your profile), or youll be posting rogue things, without knowing youre posting them (thanks to a rogue friend who now has access to you), or your personal information and habits are now known by strangers (and leaving you unprotected to burglary or worse).

If you meet someone in a group, or game, or app, you really dont know if the person is who he says he is. The person could be in there, hoping to gain rapport with others so that she can connect with all and start sending fraudulent offers and pleas. There is no guarantee anyone on FB is who they say they are. already if the identity is true, that doesnt average their motives are pure.

If you get a request from someone who you know you are already friends with, dont accept – check with your friend first, as its likely the new request is from a clone. You can often look at their page link and notice its different from a normal page link – not just the persons name. Sometimes, it may be authentic (one friend forgot her password and instead of have FB get a reset, she set up a new profile).

Cloners want to pretend to be you, or anyone else, to get access to your friend list – sending friend requests to all those friends. Once a new friend list is made, then rogue posts and requests start posting – ask for money, post things to click on that are trying to take advantage of you, or phishing schemes (to gather information from you), etc. It may look harmless, but gives a load of information to a rogue person. Quizzes ask pointed questions – gathering information that will, for many people, be one of their passwords.

Sometimes a authentic friend gets hacked – someone has logged in as that person and is posting things that wouldnt be posted by the real person. If you see such, alert your friend in a way not connected to Facebook – email, phone call, text, or Messenger.

Rogue friends are not only unhealthy to you, but also to your friends. Once your make a friend, that person has access to all your friends – and anyone who hasnt made their friend list private, is also unprotected to being cloned. Your friends are also going to be contacted to friend you once you get cloned.

Im expecting more cloning and frauds to happen from these associations. I would suggest you do what Ive done – make your info private to only your friends and make your friend list private to you only.

If you have posted quizzes with a load of your information, or made notes on Facebook with lots of personal information – get rid of anything that contains information you would use as a password or password phrase.

FB is complete of schemers, spammers, and cloners. Be vigilant. Dont give them all your information. Dont click on posts – many, if not most, will try to get information from you (your passwords, access to your profile, for example). A quiz that asks for a lot of personal information (giving a load of information to be able to guess passwords) is rarely a good thing to answer. Posting when you are on vacation tells people you arent home – your posts come down other peoples feeds when their shared friends like or comment or react to your post. When accepting an app, or becoming a member of a group (that may be shady), your information and permissions often go along to the people who run the app. Rogue people can gather so much information from lurking on FB.