I know, you’ve heard of them already haven’t you? Well, that won’t stop you falling for one of the largest growing sectors of criminal behaviour at the present time. Here are the top 5 scams using Twitter, Facebook, Linked In etc, etc.
- Chain Letters.
You know – ‘Send this to all your friends to get…….’ Or sign this petition, or vote for this or that. Even ‘Send this to 50 friends to win a free lottery ticket’
The chances are, that this is some smart alec who has either infected one of your friends pc’s or just worded it so that you and all your friends fall for it.
The fact is that no one knows if you have or you haven’t, and if you do, somewhere it will fall into the hands of some spammers who will choose to do something even more nasty with it.
Don’t forward these emails. Don’t even reply. Find another way to get in touch with your ‘friend’ and tell them to leave you off next time if they are a real friend!
- What type of lover are you? Find out what so and so has been saying about you.
These opt in applications often come through mobile social media apps. The only option with these is delete, delete, delete! Your friend likely has a virus, and their phone or pc is sending out these tempters. Don’t click on them, and never enter your mobile number into them. You may find you are facing hefty charges for some text service which surprisingly is pretty hard to opt out of.
- You know on Twitter etc, these little web addresses – http://ht.ly/5Beux or some such. Click at your peril. These might be from a friend, and legit. They may also take you to sites ridden with malware designed to take your computer from your control and do naughty things with it, like strip all your passwords from it.
So, the lesson is to click only from people you know, or use someone elses pc to do it!
- Please help me! Ive been robbed on holiday. My phone and wallet have gone, and I need £500 to get back to the UK.
Need I say more? Someone has hacked into your friends facebook or email account and sent this to all their friends, just to see if you are the one who has had a good day and feels you should just do it, no questions asked,
- Phishing scams.
These are clever. You see an email which says there has been some unusual activity at your bank, or facebook account. Follow this link, to review the security features and confirm you are still in control of your account.
You click the link, it takes you to the website you were expecting, only it’s not. Check the URL carefully. It may be a mirror image of the site put there just to capture your details.
Final Lesson. Always be suspicious about messages which come with unusual messages. If it’s not in the normal language your friend would use, then it could well be one of the above. Do your friend a favour. Get in touch some other way to let them know they are being scammed!