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Wednesday, 15 July 2015

'Like Farming' + Fake Facebook Pages: NSW Police Force Warning

The NSW Police Force Facebook page posted this yesterday and I am VERY glad to see it.

I constantly see my Facebook friends sharing posts where you have to share a photo of an airline ticket, a cruise ticket, a family pass to a theme park in order to be in the running to be one.

Friends, please stop!

Here's a BIG hint: if the Facebook page name has punctuation in it (a full stop, misspelt organisation names, added words to company names) it is fake.

And here's another big hint: generally, no big corporations are giving away ANYTHING on Facebook. And so, here is the Facebook post from those clever folks at NSW Police Force for you:

People using social media are vulnerable to 'like farming' - scams whereby users are tricked into liking or commenting on a post without realising they might be helping fraudsters. 
A recent example involved the fake Facebook page of an airline company, which offered to give away tickets and spending money to one of its fans. People were directed to supply their personal details to enter. Little did they know at the time the page was a hoax and not the company's real page. Personal details can be used for unscrupulous purposes, such as identity theft. 
TIP: Remember, if something sounds too good to be true, don't click on it. Bogus promotions are often overly generous with their prizes as well as vague about Ts and Cs and how winners will be chosen.



And then… we saw that the NSW Police Force have a definite funny bone:



And tonight they posted this (about those posts with a photo of a sick child, asking you to type 'Amen', and the child will get their lifesaving operation… definite bull-shit):


Online fraudsters aim to increase their popularity by tricking users into 'liking' posts on their fake pages. The more likes a page gets, the more it shows up in a person's Facebook news feed. Bogus pages often target emotional vulnerability by posting sad stories of children and encouraging people to like the post. 

TIP: If you see a post aimed at tugging the heartstrings, verify it first before liking it. Fraudsters can collect data of who has liked a post and use it to create more personalised attacks.

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