In my role as Seaside Magazine’s social media administrator and in my personal life, I am gaining a savvy awareness of the inner rumblings of the World Wide Web. I know its potential for greatness and enhancing our global humanity, but I also see the potential for harm. There is nothing inherently negative about the internet; the issue is with the people who abuse its power. Be careful, surfers!
Lesson Number One: Guard your cell phone number with your life! Protect your personal information at all costs! Internet “Trolls” will stoop to nothing to get what they want. After a couple of devastating web incidents, my natural inclination to trust others online has been replaced by a very guarded and protective urge for self-preservation. I woke up fast, rose tinted glasses gone. One day, I saw an innocent-looking posting on the internet saying that if I just clicked here, I would receive a $100 gift card from “Best Buy” electronics. It was irresistible and looked totally legitimate. The thing that hooked me was the so-called Best Buy “logo:” It was an exact replica of the real thing. Those slimy smelly online reptiles are very clever and tech-savvy. Never underestimate them. The snake wanted my cell phone number to give me my prize. (I confess, I was temporarily blinded by my own greed). Silly me, I gave them my cell phone number and the horrible nightmare exploded. With lightning speed, messages piled up on my phone – each one charging $10 from my Telus account. But that was not the worst part. The text messages contained cruel threats designed to shock the hell out of me, the modus operandi of the Internet Troll. After many frantic calls to Telus security, the charges were erased and my number changed. The problem was over, but I still felt used and violated. Never again, I swore.
Lesson Number Two: Be smarter than the person on the computer screen and if you pick up a smell, trust your nose! A while back, I received a Facebook message from a strange man: “Hey gorgeous! I saw your photo and you are beautiful! I would like to get to know you.” The internet is fertile soil for sociopaths who have honed their craft to an art form. Stroking the female ego is an effective ploy. But I was getting smarter after the first disaster. I decided to check it out; I asked for his photo and I asked him calculated questions to see if he was legit. Immediately, I received photos of him in his home, shirt open showing his manly hairy chest and pics with him and his “daughter” in a rather intimate pose? I heard the saga of his painful life, telling me that he had just lost his wife, was lonely and wanted a friend, a companion. But those alarm bells were still ringing loudly in my ears! I didn’t hear back from him for a long time, another tactic of the web predator – playing hard to get. When he finally did respond, I was charmed with tales of trips around Europe with his global business! Now my hormones were bubbling: hairy chest and rich! But this time, he gave me his cell phone number and asked me to text him back on my phone. The number he gave was not local, so I searched it on the Internet. It was from a town in Nebraska – but he told me that he lived in Victoria. Further research showed that this cell phone address was the epicentre of a huge American internet scamming operation! That is scary! One false move on my part would have unleashed a storm in my life. Thank the gods that I never texted back! Sometimes, surfing the Internet feels like swimming with crocodiles. As the schemes get more sophisticated, more vigilance is needed. I realized that this friendly face on Facebook was just a fake front for a larger web scamming enterprise.
Lesson Number Three: Beware of “LIKE” Farmers! Don’t let your kind nature fatten someone else’s wallet. Have you ever wondered about the sanity of Facebook users who ask you to “Like” this post if you care about people with cancer? Why wouldn’t you! People who prey on our kind instincts are particularly dangerous. Dave Budge of the Calgary Herald tells us how “Like Farming” operates: “A Facebook page is created, with an appeal for readers to like, comment or share. The creators, who are working together to build these pages, share it among themselves. They all have big networks, so the pages instantly get into thousands of other people’s news feeds. When those people respond with a “like” or a share, then it reaches their friends. Suddenly, the thing has spread faster than a high school rumour. Then what? Then the people who started it, having quickly acquired tens of thousands of followers, sell the page. Now an advertiser has all those names and Facebook addresses. And that advertiser, who isn’t allowed to phone you and whose flyers go straight to your recycling box, is sending you commercial messages on Facebook.” But Dave Budge reveals a cruel underbelly to this particular scam: Innocent people are getting badly hurt. Regarding this scam: “Annoying, but harmless, you might think. Unless you’re Terri Johnson. She’s a mother of five in the U.S., who was surprised to find a picture of her daughter Katie on a viral Facebook post. Someone had taken a picture of Katie from Terri’s Facebook account and renamed her in a post that read, “This is my sister Mallory. She has Down syndrome and doesn’t think she’s beautiful. Please like this photo so I can show her later that she truly is beautiful.” By the time Terri was alerted to this, 3.5 million sympathetic, well-meaning people’s emotional buttons had been pushed, all so they would push the “like” button. Imagine your privacy being violated and your family innocently embroiled in a cold-hearted lie to make a buck. You might feel even more sick and angry than the Johnsons.” So, dear readers, the next time someone asks you to name a vegetable that ends in “n,” ignore it, sign out of Facebook and go take a healthy walk in our beautiful Spring weather!
By Doreen Marion Gee
Source: Dave Budge, Calgary Herald, April 9, 2013, “Budge: Facing up to Facebook scams.”