Tech Blog

[#1]

Thank god for the "hide" button on Facebook .

Those of you that keep reasonable profiles on the site, only friending people you actually know, are lucky.  Being on the radio, I use Facebook for promotion, which means I accept every "friend" request.  This makes my stream garbage for the most part, filled with quizzes and games and useless status updates from people I don't know. Until I can conveniently 'hide' them.

And over the past few weeks I've had many reason to 'hide' people as they click on that guy who got revenge on his ex , your profile pic on a site , try to find out who is creeping on their page and see t he five things every girl does before she meets her boyfriend.

Remember back in 06/07 how you'd be constantly invited to " see who's looking at your profile " on MySpace ?  It was just a phishing scam to get some malware on your computer or access your personal information yet tens of thousands (maybe millions) fell for the bait.

Now the same is happening on Facebook .

If you see someone's status that says " I love all my creepers! Find your top 10 creepers: [website redacted]" They've been clickjacked and have liked a page that they probably shouldn't have.

These scams are ever more prevalent on Facebook and the problem is the bait they use to hook is tailor made for the audience.  It's sensational boyfriend stories, it's stalking stats, it's relationship info.

There is a Clickjacking Group and a Phishing Awareness group to keep tabs on the latest scams as well as tips on how to avoid phishing scams and what to do if you've been compromised.

I almost liked social media better when it was only about geeks, we know better than to click on this stuff.  Right?

catch the buzz ... pass it on.

[#2]

Now this is so very true.  Alas, so many people just click without thinking what it could do.  Before clicking, a great word of advice is to do an online search.  All you need to do is highlight the text, copy it, then paste it into a Google search and see what comes up.  Almost guaranteed that someone will have already reported it as a scam.

And thanks for the reminder Buzz, time for a little PSA on my Facebook status to remind people not to click.