Hah, how stupid do you need to be to fall into this obvious trap. Let's see... a random cute girl approaches you online and wants to initiate a sexy chat. The chances of this happening for real and not being a scam are about the same as you being a distant cousin to a Nigerian prince who just passed away and left you millions of dollars of inheritance.
The fake Facebook profile industry
31–40 of 274 posts
Re: The fake Facebook profile industry
#32Last year I was "sex-torted" on Facebook but not by a ring of French criminals. Instead, it was by someone I had chatted with on the internet years ago (while we were both still teenagers)
She had recently gotten divorced and contacted me after many years away. We spoke about intimate things (I never shared intimate images, though she did) and were getting closer and closer to each other.
She eventually asked me for money to cover an expense for her daughter, but I didn't send it fearing I was being scammed. In exchange, she took screengrabs of the most intimate parts of our conversations and shared them to all of my professional contacts via LinkedIn as well as friends , colleagues and family on Facebook.
The experience haunts me to this day, I discussed consensual kinky stuff with her and she used this to paint me as a freak and deviant. The only people who understood it were those who had been in a similar situation or those who were in the "lifestyle" as well. Strangely, most of the support I received after the fact were women who have been similarly extorted. Men in my entourage just whispered and snickered.
To this day, I still feel shame in certain circles because of what is unsaid. The police have done absolutely nothing even in the face of evidence (reports filed with local police and FBI) but it's simply not a priority. Facebook won't even pull the posts because no intimate images were actually shared and it doesn't technically violate their "guidelines"
Net result: I've deleted my social profiles. Every last one of them (and feel better as a result). However, the damage is done and I'm totally still feeling PTSD as a result of the ordeal.
I consider myself very tech savvy (engineer, infosec background, on the internet since the early 90's) and able to smell a scam. However, it's really really easy to fall victim to something like this. Be careful.
Re: The fake Facebook profile industry
#33Is there a plugin that tags fake profiles?
Re: The fake Facebook profile industry
#34I think the saddest part of this is that they prey on people. Many of the peeps here on HN can look at a profile and say "spam," so it's hard to imagine the people who can't. The 1% return from SPAM that click on those links, or put in their credit card details. There was a ReplyAll podcast episode where one of the reporters actually tracks down a shop in India; even goes there and talks to people who've worked at a…
If some of Facebook's own moderation team cannot differentiate between spam accounts and legitimate ones then what hope is there for others?
Re: The fake Facebook profile industry
#35This... was an unreadable experience. Gratuitous animations, football field sized paragraph widths, proportional/fluid CSS sizing (thought maximizing my browser on a 1080p screen would allow me to see more), bite sized paragraphs interspersed with information-thin graphic inserts, full width graphics that have a larger height than your browser viewport, text swooshing down the screen while you're scrolling because th…
I agree. It was pretty annoying. So are the new top/bottom footers on Medium. I sometimes open up the inspector and delete those two divs just to read the page, but most of the time I don't bother, give up on the article, and just close the tab. Content should just be content. You shouldn't need Javascript to simply view a page. Even if this was all just CSS tricks, it's still pretty annoying. I mean it's a neat idea…
Re: The fake Facebook profile industry
#36Using a throwaway account to keep things private Last year I was "sex-torted" on Facebook but not by a ring of French criminals. Instead, it was by someone I had chatted with on the internet years ago (while we were both still teenagers) She had recently gotten divorced and contacted me after many years away. We spoke about intimate things (I never shared intimate images, though she did) and were getting closer and c…
Re: The fake Facebook profile industry
#37Re: The fake Facebook profile industry
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I sometimes open up the inspector and delete those two divs just to read the page It's crazy how often I need to do this as well. I remember back in the old days hitting esc would stop all the animations on a page, now you need to inspect + delete those elements. There needs to be some crowd sourced way of doing this, so if you delete an element and I visit the site, the element is gone.
Greasemonkey / Tampermonkey? I'm just too lazy to install them and write the little scripts.
But if it can't work reliably, it's not worth it at all. That's ultimately what makes technical solutions hard, not doing it at all, but rather doing it well enough to be worth the effort.
Re: The fake Facebook profile industry
#39Using a throwaway account to keep things private Last year I was "sex-torted" on Facebook but not by a ring of French criminals. Instead, it was by someone I had chatted with on the internet years ago (while we were both still teenagers) She had recently gotten divorced and contacted me after many years away. We spoke about intimate things (I never shared intimate images, though she did) and were getting closer and c…
Re: The fake Facebook profile industry
#40This... was an unreadable experience. Gratuitous animations, football field sized paragraph widths, proportional/fluid CSS sizing (thought maximizing my browser on a 1080p screen would allow me to see more), bite sized paragraphs interspersed with information-thin graphic inserts, full width graphics that have a larger height than your browser viewport, text swooshing down the screen while you're scrolling because th…