The saddest reality about the Internet is that anybody can hide to perpetuate evil simply because it is difficult to know the truth about who is on the other side unlike a face-to-face interaction. This is one reason why hacking, scamming and spamming cannot be eradicated completely.
Love is a basic human instinct that can easily be skewed towards the positive or negative depending on the context. Smart alecks who understand this fact have decided to use it in the context of luring potential victims. However, from my personal research, I can conclude that the target of social media “love” spammers (who are guys posing like babes) are guys.
This is a typical way the plot is hatched. The spammer goes to a favourite social media site and look for guys (and in a few cases they target ladies) whom they believe are well to do or that can at least part with some cash and then they add them as friends. After the friend requests are accepted, they would then send a well (in many cases poorly) written script that usually takes this format:
“Hello, How are you Am Miss Mary by Name 23 years old but age from Cape verde Island is just a number i saw your profile today am very happy to be your friend am very sorry if i embarrassing you, am not always online in this face book .com write me back to my pvt address [ maryager2@hotmail.com ] i will be happy to see your respond so that i will send you more of my pictures and i have something very serious to tell you about me Thank Mary
“Please Notes: if you cannot write to my e mail address Delete my massage it may not be for you. My E- mail Address{ maryager2@hotmail.com.”
The above was sent to me using a pretty lady’s photo as the profile picture. I have published it exactly as it was sent to me. It was poorly written and made little sense but the possibility of a few falling for this cannot be ruled out; hence, this post.
The next one is not something you will consider as love spam. However, it is important to still discuss it and I will explain why afterwards. Check it out:
“I am Elizabeth Davis, Do you need a loan to start up a business? Personal loan? Loan for your home improvement? Do you need Debt consolidation loan? Education loan? Car loan? We Offer Loans at a very affordable interest rate 2%. contact us via email ( elizabethdavis033@gmail.com ) with Your Full Name, Amount Needed, Duration, Country, Mobile Number:.. Best Regards Elizabeth Davis.”
A loan offer to a small business owner like me would certainly catch attention but of course, I know that it is a huge lie because there are no free meals anywhere, not even in Freetown. In reality, whoever was behind this format tried to play the emotional game and this is because the profile that sent this message to me had a pretty white lady who looked wealthy and confident. Of course, this was all in a bid to win me over emotionally.
Will you believe it if I tell you that I receive over a dozen of this type of messages across all my social media profiles on a daily basis?
Now you know why I chose the title ‘social media “love” spam’ – it is basically because all the messages I get, either soliciting for my “love” or for “money”, are sent through profiles of seemingly beautiful ladies who are interested in me. Hilarious!
Anyway, the big question is what you should do to prevent or reduce this menace.
- Advice your children and wards: Young people will more easily fall prey to this sort of overtures because they are quite impressionable and might want to respond. So encourage them to always ignore such messages.
- Hit the spam button: One of the easiest things you can do to help the social networking sites catch the spammers is to hit the spam button. This will give the site’s algorithm a reason to suspect that account and in most cases action is taken automatically. This is because it will be so difficult to manually monitor over a billion accounts, as in the case of Facebook.
- Do not be greedy: I have always maintained that most of those that get conned online are themselves guilty of being greedy. Clear yourself of greedy tendencies when using the Internet or social media platforms.
According to a Symantec report, social network spam uses legitimate email notification templates from the social networking sites. The message alleges that the user has some unread messages or pending invites and a fake link is provided.
The bogus link will direct users to a website that forces the download of malicious binaries, purports to be selling cheap enhancement drugs and replica products, pushes fake gambling casino sites, or advertises online adult dating sites, etc.
The hard fact is that the social media platforms and the Internet are excellent platforms that have assisted in shrinking the world into a global village where information is now freely available and they have indeed impacted our lives positively. Like every other good thing, however, these platforms are often manipulated to deceive innocent and unwary co-users with a view to defrauding them.
The Internet has its own negative peculiarities and it is, therefore, important that you are informed and also help inform those around you about them so that you can take necessary precautions to safeguard yourself on social media platforms. You must know where to draw the line when confronted with too-good-to-be-true messages online.
Credit to http://www.punchng.com/business/ict-clinic/rising-incidences-of-social-media-love-spam/
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