Extremely sophisticated facebook scam?

[AMR]

Got an incredibly personal and disturbing facebook message last night. Something along the lines of this:

Hi AMR,

It's John here, I used to go to your church at [X]. I live in Mt Wellington now, some distance away from your church at [X]. I'll try and pop by every now and then.

Anyhow, lately I have been doing [Business Y] and I really need a favour. Can you transfer $800 into my account? I'll pay you back in 3 weeks. I need it by Friday.

Creepy aye? Got all my personal details right!

[Dean@Massiveaction]

Wow that's scary. Presumably gleaned your church details etc. from FB?

I hope you sent him the money ASAP (ROFL)

[speights boy]

Some people ( not necessarily you AMR ) are very naive as to how much information they give out these days. Disturbingly so.

Another timely warning.....Thanks AMR.

Social networking sites

Someone phishes your log-in details and hacks into your social networking site - assuming your online identity. Suddenly, your social networking friends are deluged with spam, links to dodgy websites or requests for you to wire money to them.
One report to Scamwatch said: "I received calls from two friends in Australia saying that they had been 'chatting' to me on Facebook. Apparently I was in London, had been robbed and had lost everything. I then asked these friends to "loan" me $700 to be sent immediately via money transfer. My friends had the sense to ring me in NZ to check to see if the story was correct. Obviously it wasn't..."

http://www.consumeraffairs.govt.nz/scams/scam-types/internet-scams

[Dean@Massiveaction]

Yes especially for people who aren't online regularly to notice this is a real problem.
Changingones passwords regularly is a good simple risk minimiser.

[Hec]

Hi AMR,
and you just "confirmed" some personal details on here......

Hec

[CJ]

Hi AMR,
and you just "confirmed" some personal details on here......

Hec

that he is on facebook, goes to church and doesn't live in Mt Wellington??

[ChrisD]

Another good reason to not freely give these companies your intimate personal details. Unfortuantely 500 million people already have....

[Keys]

There's a thread on here which encourages members to talk about themselves.

[donna]

Wasn't Facebook set up by the CIA? There's a great book to get called "How to Disappear" by Frank M Ahearn. It scares you re. what can be found out about anyone online and I recall Dean starting a discussion re. Car registration details etc - essentially it's easy to find out personal information on most of us whether we are using social networking sites or not...but there are ways to 'disappear' if you want to get lost.

Cheers,

Donna

[Property Man]

Social networks are amazing tools for personal use and business. While these platforms boom over the next few years, the number of personal identification frauds will increase too. Each platform do have security and privacy policies so you can adjust your settings to make your accounts and personal info more secure.

Regards
Aaron

[The_Dog]

it's amazing how there is so much detail out there, but when a tenant does a runner, Housing NZ doesn't have a bloody clue where they got to.

On a more serious note, my mother got a similar message through e-mail quoting all sorts of personal details about my dead father. It certainly made her think carefully if it was genuine, and luckily she ran it past me. I googled a few details from the e-mail and soon revealed it was a scam.

If you every get anything you are suspicious about - GOOGLE. You'd be surprised how any dead accurate hits you get as you are not the first person to be targeted, and there are plenty of people out there to warn you.

TD

[BusyLizzy]

I wanted to 'research' someone not so long ago. I googled the name, and came up with an entry on OldFriends. His email address was visible and it identified a distinctive 'pseudonym' or alias that he used (eg [email protected]).

I then searched on that 'dickhead' pseudonym, and found several dubious forums that he had posted on. The member profiles on each site gave me enough info to confirm that it was him. Through a post, I found a link to a photo sharing website, and from there was able to find some even more dubious set of pics that very nicely profiled the sort of character that I was researching. Now if I were that way inclined, I could do some serious damage to his so-called credible reputation. Lucky for him, I was just satisfied knowing that my suspicions were confirmed and that I would keep my distance.

Be very careful what you share online - and don't be surprised how easy it is to follow a trail.

On the upside, I then googled my own name to see what came up. I came across a geeky website on which I had entered a competition months ago. I was announced as the winner, but for some reason never received notification so never received the prize. I followed up months later, and they no longer had the prize but gave me a much better one!

[muppet]

Hahaha found a class photo of me from 1963 but nothing else.

[BusyLizzy]

D'ya want me to see what I can find out about YOU, Muppet?? I'll bet I could dig up some dirt.

(Just teasing you... I got better things to do with my time. Like mow the lawns)

[muppet]

Email it please.