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Tuesday, September 08, 2009

 

Scammed through facebook

Here’s a story of yet another internet scam. Not so long ago I received a similar letter from a facebook friend—someone who is a friend of a friend and who I have never actually met in person. It never occurred to me at the time that it might be fake. I thought to myself ‘he’s got a hide’ and sent an email saying I couldn’t help out at the moment. In this particular case the person was asking for US $2,500 because he’d lost his wallet in London.

I look at it this way, assuming the request was genuine, if someone is asking for something from me that I would not consider asking from them then I have no reason to feel bad about rejecting the request. When I travel, I do it on the cheap. If I lost my wallet, even in London, I doubt that I would have been carrying $2,500 in it. I can live for a long time on $2,500. I doubt that I would ever need to ask anyone to transfer $2,500 to me and if I did I have a relative who handles my finances in Australia. If that relative got such a request I think they would know if I’d written it. If the writing style was different they should be suspicious. There is no one else I would ask. And certainly not someone I’ve never met.

If you follow the link above to the article I’m referring to, read the comments. There are many suggestions of ways to avoid this sort of thing happening. Most importantly, don’t trust your information to facebook. I’ve written before about not giving sites access to files on your computer. Facebook and many of its subsidiary applications request access to your files. Don’t allow it. Get a life. Find some other way to communicate with people.

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Comments:
I've just received a second one with almost the same wording. It came from someone who almost never emails me. They are not a facebook friend but I guess they have given facebook access to their email address book.
 
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