go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing

Beware of fake Facebook profiles asking to be friends with you. This is the new “phishing” that I am dubbing “fbishing” (pronounced “fuh-bishing”)

Clues to look out for are

- you dont know who it is

- they have no friends

- they have no posts, photos or other activity

- their favorites, music, etc. look like a promotional page for a company’s product or services,

- it is in a foreign language,

- the photo is of a hot girl (or guy) in a bikini

- the face in the photo is not showing,

- they have no friends in common with you

- they have hundreds of friends in common with you, but you dont know any of those either

- the only activity in their stream is friending other people

- they have fake names like “dokter nikki”

- they have thousands of friends

- the profile photo is NSFW

- their photo looks like a prison mug shot

- they use a picture of Garfield for their profile, have no picture, or a cartoonified photo

Once they are your friend, even your tight Facebook privacy settings like “friends only” wont stop them from seeing your entire list of friends (who become the next round of fbishing attempts).

Consider yourself warned. No more casual “friend accepting” and always practice safe facebooking.