A strange thing is happening on Facebook. Out of nowhere all these attractive women with profile pictures of themselves scantily clad want to be my friend. Obviously I’ve become a hot commodity all of the sudden which I can understand being awesome and all.
Of course I’m a big believer in, “If you’re going to do fraud do it right.” I’m sorry I can’t bring myself to believe that the girl in the profile picture graduated college in 1978. If that’s the truth then plastic surgery has really advanced in the last couple of years.
The question is raised why the sudden surge of random people trying to add themselves to my friends list? Well the Occam’s Razor stated that the simplest explanation is usually the best one and that holds true here. These fake friend requests are most likely attempts at identity theft. Many people put a lot of personal information on their profiles such as their home address, phone number, and place of work. All of these pieces of information can be useful in stealing a person’s identity.
If you’re going to use these types of social networking sites be careful. Remember not to post any important personal information such as you home address and don’t add people to your friends list unless you know them. The weakest link in any security system are the people. Social engineering can be used with far better results than physical hacking as people are generally very gullible. Having a healthy dose of paranoia isn’t a bad thing.