There are several nasty ways that scammers can get hold of your private information, especially on social networking sites.  Here PC Clinic outline three key Facebook safety issues that we want you to be aware of, and how to avoid getting caught out:

  1. For those not in the know,like-farming is the process where spammers post exploitative and deceptive posts to help their spammy pages accumulate followers. These followers can then be exposed to spam, online scams or the Facebook pages can be sold to untrustworthy marketing companies. Typical scenarios include “like for this”, “share for that”, “like to say Amen” etc etc.  Genuine business pages won’t do such “unrealistic” posts, typical ones you often see are a batch of unopened gadgets being given away for free, all you must do is Like the post…. Too good to be true isn’t it?

 

  1. Having a public Friends list is a default setting on Facebook and really needs changing to prevent scammers viewing your friends. It’s quite simple in theory, a scammer clones your account and sends out requests, and a friend request is accepted. The scammer can attempt to initialise any number of different scams on your friend, which could very well be successful as they would think the new profile is You. It’s called Facebook cloning, and certainly one to avoid – so let’s minimise it happening. Easy to fix by opening your Facebook Profile, click on Friends, and click the pencil icon (top right).  You can then change your privacy settings accordingly.

 

  1. If you receive an image file sent by someone, even your friend, on your Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn or any other social media platform, just DO NOT CLICK ON IT. There have been many reports of simple JPG files being embedded with nasty viruses which can in turn infect your computer. The most recent one being the infamous Locky Ransomware virus, and you really do not want to get this on your computer.

 

For any further help and advice, pop in to your local computer and laptop centre, PC Clinic in Huntingdon Court.  Fully endorsed by Which? Trusted Traders and partners with industry brand leaders – for your peace of mind.

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