Wednesday 9 September 2015

Facebookers: Beware Of What You Like!

Some people can be very unscrupulous indeed. To them, it is an opportunity to make the most of the given situation. They prey on human emotions, empathy...with the intention to rip you off. It is unfortunate that many have fallen for their tricks...


The Situation:
23 migrant Syrians (including children) were leaving Turkey to Greece on two boats. The boats sank shortly after taking off. Twelve bodies including five children who drowned were recovered and only nine are thought to have survived(those who could swim and had life jackets). Among the children who drowned was a three-year old boy named Alyan Kurdi, his older brother who was five years and mother. His father was reported to have made several attempts to rescue his sons and wife but to no avail.

The Opportunity:
The image(s) of Alyan Kurdi's dead body was broadcasted online as shown and reported by UK newspaper, the Independent. It even trended worldwide on twitter under the #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik ("humanity washed ashore") hashtag as reported by the BBC. There was an international outcry to the fate of this migrants that were looking to be as far as possible from the ISIS back home.

The Crime:
Scammers and spammers online especially on Facebook cashed in on the  image of the lifeless body of this three-year old child for their own nefarious activities. They were using it to trick people into making charitable donations on fake websites to obtaining likes from empathized individuals.... The information from those likes are either sold to other scammers or to social marketing firms(to use it for humanity knows what).
The thing is... You never know what you give out when you like fake posts or scam pages. It goes far beyond the gory image or the heart-piercing story...It goes beyond that. These guys know something about human psychology...basic human instincts to show empathize to touching situations...



The Defense:
One proven method used to avoid falling for such scams that leads to relinquishing your privacy and control especially when you like ads, posts or "illegitimate pages" on Facebook is by... making some changes to your privacy settings. 
1. Click the down arrow next to the padlock in the top-right corner of the main Facebook screen. 
2. Choose  Settings.
3. Scroll to Ads.
4. Select "Edit" under "Apps and friends," to your right.
5. Click the drop down menu after "pair my social actions with ads for"
6. Choose "No one" in the drop-down menu.
7.  Save Changes.

CNET's article on how to avoid making one of the 10 worst Facebook mistakes  though about three years old, will be worth the read.
Finally as the advice from CyberheistNews says....
"Remember, any time you see shocking news that tries to make you do anything, Think Before You Click!"


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