Be careful who your friends are, at least on social media. Something called farcing, a form of phishing, is on the rise and could result in the theft of your personal data. And those involved can scam you far easier than you think.
Arun Vishwanath, an associate professor of communication at the University of Buffalo, recently did research into the act of farcing by assuming four fake identities on Facebook and sending friend requests to 150 Facebook users. The first profile had no photo and no friends, the second had no friends but a photo, the third had 10 friends but no photo, the third had one photo and 10 friends. Each profile listed gender as male and the photos used were previously rated as average in attractiveness.
Of those 150 users that received a friend request from one of these fake profiles, one in five okayed the request. After interviewing the "victim" users, researchers learned that they often approved requests based on the photo and profile (including number of friends).
In the real world, just approving the request gives the farcer information made available via the site: everything from your phone number to your list of friends to your status updates about when you're not home. And because your friends see you've added this person, they're more likely to fall victim to these scams too.
However, farcers don't always stop there.
"A motivated phisher can go on to the second stage, requesting more information directly from the victim by using messaging functions within the social media platform," says Vishwanath. "Messages can be crafted to take advantage of the asymmetries between the information mined from the victim's page and the deceptive intent of the phisher."
A recent well-publicized example of this occurred when a New York state teacher created a false profile as a female student. He used the profile to friend minors and sent messages requesting sexually-explicit photos. Police arrested him in 2011 and he is currently serving 30 years in prison. This is similar to how Hollywood's infamous "bling ring" happened. The teenage robbers used information about celebrities obtained from their social media accounts to plan break-ins.
"These scams are on the rise and will continue to increase with the popularity of social media, exponentially increasing the number of farcing victims worldwide," Vishwanath says.
However, you can protect yourself: the key here is to maintain vigilance with your social media profiles. Don't friend people you don't know and don't make your judgment about them based solely on their profiles. By doing so, you're not only protecting yourself, but also your friends.
