On the heels of the pleaserobme.com craze, the Today Show featured the latest scam involving social networks where prisoners are using information you’re posting in Facebook to pose as you, call your grandmother, and scam her to send money to them.
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And while this is yet more fuel to the "misinformed fire" for those who say Facebook (and other social networks) is bad, social media itself isn't the root of the issue.
[The solution is common sense and the need to educate.]
1. Don’t friend people you don’t know, period.
2. Use privacy controls to regulate public vs. friend-only content.
3. Think before you post – Ask yourself: “Could this be damaging to me/my family?”
4. Assume everything you post is/could be made public.
5. Be diligent, second guess, and confirm actions that feel outside the norm.
And now that grandparents outnumber high school students on Facebook, we must be the ones to create awareness amongst our more senior family members on social media’s darker side to raise their “virtual street smarts” just as they taught us, growing up.
[Scams have been happening since the dawn of time.]And, once again, the Web (through social media) is simply shining a light on how the ways of thieves and scammers are evolving just as technology is doing the same.
