I could probably 'hack' your Facebook account. Be afraid.

[JR8]

I'll try and cut a long story short. A good female friend of mine Caro was last week facing 'the next step' with her boyfriend and expressing doubts about his loyalty. This being harsher on her as it is long-distance. So almost as a joke I suggested creating a 'honey-trap' id on Facebook, trying to make a Friend request to her boyfriend and seeing what happened.

Well my friend left that to me, so I created a profile under the name Joss Lxxxxxx-Smith [taken down for now], with a pic of a nice youngish American model, profile, background etc. It was plausible, and foxy rather than OTT or at all trashy.

I then went out and just Friended the first 20 odd people (both genders) who were suggested and plausible friends. Out of the replies, about 15, all but one simply accepted. Only one guy PMd and asked 'Do I know you?'. Hey presto we now had something approaching a newbie profile, and that took less than 24 hours. I then handed over the id to my friend.

Once the profile had enough cred we then sent a Friend request to the guy in question. Well, sorry to say he went for it hook line and sinker. In two days he was agreeing to meet up and basically gagging for it (the guy is 45 years old for heavens sake).

That was when he busted his flush. My friend feigned a hissy-fit and second thoughts, and backed out, the point was proven. She then blocked him on FB, and is backing out in real-life. She suspects he is too thick to make a connection between her and 'Joss' both walking out within a week.

Point is guys and gals, think about who you Friend on Facebook. Within a day or two we had full unquestioned access into at least 15 people's accounts, lives, photos, backgrounds, including 'his', all of them total strangers (bar him). If I'd have sent 100 or 1000 requests I don't doubt the 75% accept rate would be mirrored.

My friend was asking how I thought she should back out from being 'Joss' on his Friends list, and I said change your profile pic and name to your real ones, 'that's going to wake him up!', but perhaps wisely she thought that too heavy. i.e. Suddenly the new chick he is trying to shmooze, before his eyes morphs into his girlfriend and all the messages from the new birds etc are now all in his girlfriends name. Ouch.

But fact is, if I know anything about you (from Googling you or something), I can probably find pix and names of your school or college buddies and approach you. 75% or so odds suggest you'll accept me as a complete stranger, higher if my assumed name actually does mean something to you. And I could well be a psycho stalker...

FB Friends List 'harvesters' be very very afraid of the enemy within ...


Edited:
To scramble the fake id's user-name, as I don't want this to be Googlable by the guy who got stung...

[x9200]

FB itself was heavily criticized for their ways of handling privacy. Personally I try to limit amount of information given to the portal itself as much as possible. I.e. I think it is very risky to let them harvest the e-mail addresses from your accounts looking for new friends. I have never let it so I am curious what happens if I do something like this: I see somebody's e-mail address on this or a different forum, I fabricate an email in my mbox so it looks like it was sent to me from this person, now I let FB to get addresses from my mbox and look for my "friends". What does FB do if it finds the match?

[longstebe]

I'm a miserable bastard, I don't have a FB account.

[nakatago]

Zuckerpunch
"The act of creating deliberately confusing jargon and user-interfaces which trick your users into sharing more info about themselves than they really want to. Usually associated with e-marketers and e-spammers." -Tom Jones
A Zuckerpunch is an "evil" interface is meant to trick users into doing things they don't want to. Greg Conti's examples include aggressive pop-up ads, malware that masquerades as anti-virus software, and pre-checked checkboxes for unwanted "special offers".

ref. Facebook's "Evil Interfaces." Tim Jones. April 29, 2010. Electronic Frontier Foundation - Deep Links (blog). Retrieved from: www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebooks-evil-interfaces on May 1, 2010.

'nuff said

[x9200]

It is ok to use it if you know what you dealing with but than again most ppl don't.

[ozchick]

I'm a miserable bastard, I don't have a FB account.

You ain't missing anything! Good for photo-sharing though....

[JR8]

It can be good if you very tightly control how you use it, and access/privacy etc. My Friends list extends to a paltry 24. But these are REAL friends and people that I'm happy chatting with every couple of days, swapping music, photos, recipes, jokes and so on...

[beenthere]

It can be good if you very tightly control how you use it, and access/privacy etc. My Friends list extends to a paltry 24. But these are REAL friends and people that I'm happy chatting with every couple of days, swapping music, photos, recipes, jokes and so on...

Ditto. More than 24 but very carefully crafted set of permissions and privacy settings - you need to know what you are doing. This has been a great way to connect with my my far flung set of close friends and family.

[JR8]

FB itself was heavily criticized for their ways of handling privacy. Personally I try to limit amount of information given to the portal itself as much as possible. I.e. I think it is very risky to let them harvest the e-mail addresses from your accounts looking for new friends. I have never let it so I am curious what happens if I do something like this: I see somebody's e-mail address on this or a different forum, I fabricate an email in my mbox so it looks like it was sent to me from this person, now I let FB to get addresses from my mbox and look for my "friends". What does FB do if it finds the match?

Yes I see what you mean, I wonder if FB takes the 'apparent e-mail address' or the real address? Beyond my tech ability I'm afraid.

The 'Suggested Friends' feature is a pain in the ar$e, but not so hard to ignore. I agree though, I don't even want people in my e-mail accounts to be about to view my limited public Profile page. FB's mission is to grow as much as possible, and given any chance it will get your info broadcast to the world. Evil.

But all in all the amount of data people seem to put into their profiles and walls, and the way they seem to trust the site and anyone that wants to be their Friend, when it has more holes than a sieve is what alarms me.

p.s. I never ever post on the internet under my real name, never have. Even my Facebook id is not my real name but an intentionally 'encrypted' nick-name, as I do not have a desire to be searchable to half a billion people!

[ev-disinfection]

I'll try and cut a long story short. A good female friend of mine Caro was last week facing 'the next step' with her boyfriend and expressing doubts about his loyalty. This being harsher on her as it is long-distance. So almost as a joke I suggested creating a 'honey-trap' id on Facebook, trying to make a Friend request to her boyfriend and seeing what happened.

Well my friend left that to me, so I created a profile under the name Joss Lxxxxxx-Smith [taken down for now], with a pic of a nice youngish American model, profile, background etc. It was plausible, and foxy rather than OTT or at all trashy.

I then went out and just Friended the first 20 odd people (both genders) who were suggested and plausible friends. Out of the replies, about 15, all but one simply accepted. Only one guy PMd and asked 'Do I know you?'. Hey presto we now had something approaching a newbie profile, and that took less than 24 hours. I then handed over the id to my friend.

Once the profile had enough cred we then sent a Friend request to the guy in question. Well, sorry to say he went for it hook line and sinker. In two days he was agreeing to meet up and basically gagging for it (the guy is 45 years old for heavens sake).

That was when he busted his flush. My friend feigned a hissy-fit and second thoughts, and backed out, the point was proven. She then blocked him on FB, and is backing out in real-life. She suspects he is too thick to make a connection between her and 'Joss' both walking out within a week.

Point is guys and gals, think about who you Friend on Facebook. Within a day or two we had full unquestioned access into at least 15 people's accounts, lives, photos, backgrounds, including 'his', all of them total strangers (bar him). If I'd have sent 100 or 1000 requests I don't doubt the 75% accept rate would be mirrored.

My friend was asking how I thought she should back out from being 'Joss' on his Friends list, and I said change your profile pic and name to your real ones, 'that's going to wake him up!', but perhaps wisely she thought that too heavy. i.e. Suddenly the new chick he is trying to shmooze, before his eyes morphs into his girlfriend and all the messages from the new birds etc are now all in his girlfriends name. Ouch.

But fact is, if I know anything about you (from Googling you or something), I can probably find pix and names of your school or college buddies and approach you. 75% or so odds suggest you'll accept me as a complete stranger, higher if my assumed name actually does mean something to you. And I could well be a psycho stalker...

FB Friends List 'harvesters' be very very afraid of the enemy within ...


Edited:
To scramble the fake id's user-name, as I don't want this to be Googlable by the guy who got stung...

So JR8, have you gone out with the 45 year old yet?

I feel that this trap is not very fair,
he is still single, and "Joss L Smith" wants to be his friend, and he finds that they have the same likes / dislikes...
Seems to me, he is looking at his options.
Unfaithful? hmmmm... My 20 cents worth.

[JR8]

EV-D
I feel that this trap is not very fair,
he is still single, and "Joss L Smith" wants to be his friend, and he finds that they have the same likes / dislikes...
Seems to me, he is looking at his options.
Unfaithful? hmmmm... My 20 cents worth.



'Being his friend'? It went from him being approached by a stranger, to him offering to drive up to London on Friday night to go out on a date. He'd already made an earlier comment along the lines of 'When we go out you'll be coming back to my place'.

That Friday night (14th) was the night his actual girlfriend Caro was arriving in the UK and expecting to go directly to his place. While the guy was Facebooking Joss telling how how much he enjoyed kissing, Caro was trying to SMS him to find out what he was doing on Friday night.

Plus note as Joss, she was able to see the goings on on his wall that he had blocked her from as Caro.

You'll agree that a respectable and intelligent lady has her OB markers. Well he bulldozed through them I'm afraid.





Edit: to format

[JayCee]

Seems to me, he is looking at his options.
Unfaithful? hmmmm... My 20 cents worth.

Spoken like a true Singaporean male

[JR8]

Wonder if EV-D has a Facebook account?

[ev-disinfection]

To JR8 -- In the case..... hahahahahhaaaaa That is so funny..

To JayCee -- Spoken like a true Singaporean male -
Don't all Females and Males think that way? internationally?

To JR8 -- Yes I do... and if you try that honey trap on me, I too will drive from Singapore to London..... LOL (add me if you can)

[JayCee]

To JayCee -- Spoken like a true Singaporean male -
Don't all Females and Males think that way? internationally?

Surprisingly not. To most people's minds, what he did crossed the line and wasn't just a matter of keeping his "options open".

The reason for my comment is that Singaporean men (in my experience) rank second only to the Japanese on the "dirty-old-man-ometer" and seem to thing manogamy is a type of wood that you make furniture out of. Is it any wonder that more and more Singaporean women want to date foreigners (taking away the other obvious reasons)