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The fake Facebook profile industry

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Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#81

Post by djsumdog »

abtom wrote: post #57
throwawayfish wrote: post #32

Using 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…

This is something that could have happened to anyone. Not just because of misplaced trust in an online partner but because it's easy to create fake screenshots of conversations using Photoshop or simply Inspect Element. I'm interested in how you mitigated the damage once the post was published. A good strategy might have been to simply discredit it as being fake/photoshopped along with a small tutorial showing how ea…

The OP probably didn't think about it, but that's really a great idea/strategy. I bet the poster was just so rattled by it he didn't think about just denying it.

I can see why the police/fbi can't really do anything. It doesn't seem like there was anything criminal technically. They might be able to go after the person with a civil suit for slander? I don't know though, not a lawyer.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#82

Post by grownseed »

Facebook recently started sending me notifications that somebody unknown was trying to log into my account, that they'd temporarily blocked it, and later re-enabled it. The emails actually come from Facebook, the problem is that the email address they're contacting me on is one I've never used for Facebook. The email contains a link to log into Facebook to "fix" the situation, but I obviously can't log in. The other link in the email is to unsubscribe from their notifications, but not from Facebook. There is absolutely no way for me to say "yes, this is my email address, and no, it should not be tied to Facebook in any way". There is also no way for me to check what Facebook account is supposedly attached to this email. This feels incredibly underhanded, it's either "join Facebook, or risk having somebody steal an account you never created". So back to the point of the article, Facebook is at the very least passively encouraging this fake profile stuff, and the cynic in me thinks it might not be that passive...

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#83

Post by CaptSpify »

fiatpandas wrote: post #12

This... 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…

uBlock Origin and uMatrix are your friends. Here's how it looks for me (zoomed way out): https://tmp.thekyel.com/month/2017.11.14.08.33.1510677203.pn...

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#84

Post by djsumdog »

astura wrote: post #52
scraft wrote: post #49

1. I got told many years ago, that when you get that crazily bad emails, where it claims to be from some official source, but there are spelling mistakes, the return email address is obviously wrong, grammer is terrible, etc. the sort where it is so completely obviously it is a scam - often this is done on purpose, they aren't intereseting >99% of people who can spot a scam, they are interested in the 2. Separately t…

See Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They are From Nigeria?: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...

I remember that post. I also remember when I first learned that Nigerian scammers are actually for Nigeria. I thought for sure they'd pick a different country than their actual one.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#85

Post by underwoodley »

irishbro wrote: post #8

The 2010 documentary catfish, and subsequent mtv series, offers an interesting look behind the curtain at the type of people who create fake facebook profiles. It covers a wide variety of reasons for creating them spanning from people who suffer from low self-esteem and confidence issues to not being able to reveal that they are homo-sexual out of fear of their friends and family finding out, just out of pure malice…

You should be aware that this is a very questionable documentary and the makers of the documentary who are now the presenters of the TV show have been credibly accused of faking footage and exploiting the subject.

> Some journalists and film critics have cast doubt on the filmmakers motivations. Kyle Buchanan of MovieLine questions why the filmmakers would begin obsessively documenting Nev's online relationship so early on, and argues that it is highly improbable that media-savvy professionals like the Schulmans and Joost would not use the Internet to research Megan and her family before meeting them. Buchanan and others have suggested that the filmmakers likely discovered the fabrications in Wesselman-Pierce's story earlier than is presented in the film and pretended to be fooled only so that they could exploit her story for the documentary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_(film)#Authenticity

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#86

Post by CaptSpify »

tantalor wrote: post #33
qaq wrote: post #2

Is there a plugin that tags fake profiles?

How? If a plugin could do that then the site could do that.

The site has incentives to avoid doing that. A crowd-sourced plugin similar to uBlock's 3rd party filters would probably work way better.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#87

Post by dopamean »

code_duck wrote: post #75
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shocking how easy it is to become a liar without missing a beat. If they slipped and someone caught them lying, it would become exponentially worse. Bad idea. But they should be proud of their sexuality. Whether it's BDSM or hotwifing or whatever strange kink, who cares? It's the same as shaming someone for being gay. I dislike that we have to be so Victorian about sex. It's the social climate we live in, but...…

The climate of judging people for private sexual morality is slowly changing in the United States… Same with marijuana smoking. In the 90s, affairs or past pot smoking were considered a big deal. Since then, we have elected Obama and Trump, who would not have passed moral snuff in the 80s.

I know plenty of people who despite really, really disliking Donald Trump were very put off by the public discussion of the "pee tape" stuff. They called it kink shaming and said that on its own it shouldn't matter if that is the kind of stuff the President is into. I tend to agree and I think a lot of other sensible people do too.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#88

Post by pfftzaftig »

code_duck wrote: post #75
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shocking how easy it is to become a liar without missing a beat. If they slipped and someone caught them lying, it would become exponentially worse. Bad idea. But they should be proud of their sexuality. Whether it's BDSM or hotwifing or whatever strange kink, who cares? It's the same as shaming someone for being gay. I dislike that we have to be so Victorian about sex. It's the social climate we live in, but...…

The climate of judging people for private sexual morality is slowly changing in the United States… Same with marijuana smoking. In the 90s, affairs or past pot smoking were considered a big deal. Since then, we have elected Obama and Trump, who would not have passed moral snuff in the 80s.

Huh? Have you been following the news recently. I thought your comment was going to go another way.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#89

Post by emurph55 »

fiatpandas wrote: post #12

This... 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 really liked it!

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#90

Post by sddfd »

CaptSpify wrote: post #78
denisehilton wrote: post #74

It's about time Facebook should start taking action against fake profile. They should make use of AI to separate them out.

They have every incentive to do the opposite though. Fake profiles still count towards ad-revenue because advertisers aren't calling Facebook out on their bullshit.

Sounds like a competitor of Facebook should do it then..
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