Photo from Facebook's recent Halloween party,
Note the sign that says, "Welcome to Fraudville" mocking the fraud
in which many of Facebook's 300 million members fall prey
Infoworld explained how cyberthieves using social media to scam people. It seems the scammers are "legitimate" companies that run deceptive ads on these networks. TechCrunch also explains how advertisers are using social games to trick Facebook and MySpace users into giving out personal info. or signing up for recurring subscriptions.
As Infoworld explains,
...it starts with stupid-yet-addictive quizzes and games like FarmVille, Mafia Family Wars, and Mobsters. The games themselves are free, but if you want to advance faster than your friends, you'll probably have to buy virtual objects using real money.BusinessWeek:
Zynga doesn't charge users to play FarmVille, but it does sell digital crops, cattle, and farmland. Corn seed, for instance, goes for the equivalent of 10 cents; cows run 20 cents each. All those digital goods add up. Zynga pulls in its nine-figure annual revenues from FarmVille and 20 other games....One recent success: digital sweet potato seeds that cost $5 a packet. The seeds, which of course cost nothing to duplicate, pulled in more than $400,000 in three days.Infoworld continues:
Don't have $5 to spend on a bag of imaginary seeds? You can get $450 in Farm Cash by clicking an ad and signing up to receive a "free learning CD" from Video Professor. Of course, the "free" offer comes with caveats; if you don't cancel in time, you'll pony up $190 for an entire learning series.TechCrunch describes a typical scam:
Users are offered in game currency in exchange for filling out an IQ survey. Four simple questions are asked. The answers are irrelevant. When the user gets to the last question they are told their results will be text messaged to them. They are asked to enter in their mobile phone number, and are texted a pin code to enter on the quiz. Once they’ve done that, they’ve just subscribed to a $9.99/month subscription.Of course, none of this is complete without Facebook's own complacency and mockery of the scams. This is indicative of Facebook's continued negligence in protecting their 300 million members from them these scams as well as many other problems on their platform. Is "Fraudville" a mockery of Farmville? Or is it really just Facebook headquarters....(since Facebook earns quite a pretty penny from this fraud as well.) Don't ask Facebook- they're having too much fun profiting off of you and blowing off your concerns.
See also:
- Facebook's New Privacy Policy: Every Step You Take, Facebook Will Be Watching You
- Facebook Slams App Developers with New TOS Policies
- Facebook users under cyberattack!
- Facebook: So what if 1 million people complain? We're HUGE! They are nothing!
- "Facebook feels dead. Did Facebook Kill Itself?"
- Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook is Really a Hacker Company
- "Facebook's moves sometimes are so half-baked that it's practically mind numbing"
- The Collapse of Facebook
- Identity theft a growing menace to social networkers on Facebook
- Italy Probes "Kill Berlusconi" Facebook Pages
- Jewish Tribune: Facebook takes down activist who fights antisemitism, terror
- Internet Activist No Friend of Facebook
- The powerful online voice of jihad found on Facebook
- Hacked Facebook Apps Lead to Fake Antivirus Software
- 150,000 People Lose Facebook Accounts Due to Continued Technical Issues, Glitches
- Security Risks: The Dangers of Clickjacking with Facebook
- More Security Concerns at Facebook: Applications at risk from attack
- More Privacy Issues: Facebook Hit With Another Beacon Lawsuit
- More Technical Problems at Facebook: Database outage cuts off about 150,000 members for nearly 2 weeks
- Facebook is gold for identity thieves
- Too much information? Facebook users may be revealing more than they think
- Should teachers be friends with their students on Facebook?
- Jewish Tribune: Facebook takes down activist who fights antisemitism, terror
- Zuckerberg: No need for Facebook to be proactive on antisemitism
- Facebook digs through user data
- Facebook Makes Deal to Pester Users With Polls and Hand Data to Nielson
- Holocaust Denial on Facebook is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
- Feeling Safe with Your Real Information Posted on Facebook? REPORT: Hezbollah Spying Through Facebook
- JIDF Account Deactivated Again
- Federal Government Cracks Down on Facebook Fan Pages
- FBI warns of social networking fraud and malware escalation on Facebook
- Today's disgruntled Facebook employee could be tomorrow's identity thief, or just someone who has the power to make your life miserable
- SUCCESS!!! JIDF TAKES OUT MASSIVE "HATE ISRAEL" FAN PAGE WITH OVER 122,000 FANS!
- New status update of the "Hate Israel" fan page: "i killed half the jews and left the other half for you to discover why i killed the first" [hitler]
- Facebook Censors Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro, but not Hamas and Hezbollah
- (Video) FOX NEWS Covers More Issues at Facebook
- 100 New Antisemitic/Pro-Jihadist Facebook Groups
- 40 New Hate/Terrorist Groups on Facebook
- Top 20 Newest and Most Active Terrorist and Antisemitic Groups on Facebook
- JIDF Guide to Facebook Groups
- Regarding material on Facebook
- Mujahideen Groups on Facebook
- Hezbollah: Swapping MP3's on Facebook
- Small Sampling of This Week's Terrorist Activity on Facebook
- JIDF Pride
- Thousands Use Facebook to Celebrate Terrorist Attack Today
- Facebook Endorses Hamas?
- A Terrorist Group Planning and Calling for the Bombing of Egyptian Border (on Facebook!)
- Oboler: The Rise and Fall of a Facebook Hate Group
- JIDF Letter to Facebook Regarding Illegal Content