Facebook Scams

Posted July 12th, 2009

Facebook is a common social networking media tool that is popular with high school and post-secondary students. Making the transition from high school to college or university is one of the most exciting times in a student’s life, therefore it should come as no surprise that they would join their new school’s Facebook “Class of …” site. It’s a great idea! In order to meet fellow classmates, ask alumni and upper year students questions and get excited about the institution that the student has chosen.

It’s a great idea except Facebook has recently fallen victim to fake users, setting up “University/College name – Class of 2013” sites that are actually advertisers that collect, for marketing purposes, information from the people that join the groups. Administrators from various schools in Canada have taken to seeking out these groups, reporting them, and proceeding to set up their own official groups in order to assure that their students are not spammed. This is a saving grace, but as more groups are deleted, the fake groups continue to pop up. It is important that students entering into post-secondary institutions for the first time are aware of the potential fake groups that they may encounter. To read further on this you can link to the following sites:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/661370 - July 6, 2009

http://matthewmelnyk.blogspot.com/2009/06/facebook-2014-2015-and-beyond.html - June 25, 2009

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/facebook-scam-targets-undergrads/article1183110/ - June 19, 2009

http://matthewmelnyk.blogspot.com/2009/06/normal-0-false-false-false.html - June 3, 2009