I have a family member who often posts computer security warnings on his Facebook page—and that's interesting to me because his feed has thousands of followers, most of whom are fake! This particular family member is what I would call a "computing professional," but I don't really fault him for this issue since it's more of a marketing topic than a technology one. I have another friend who, in an effort to get lucky with something, anything, responds to every Facebook giveaway that comes up—even when those giveaways are clearly too good to be true. (e.g. Type YES in the comments below to see something amazing happen!) And of course, we all have friends who comment, share, and follow pages—or participate in online quizzes, contests, or tests—that appear to have no commercial purpose whatsoever.And so comes the boring, oft repeated truism: if it's free, you are the product.In each of these scenarios, you are the product:
- For my family member with the fake Facebook friends, he doesn't realize that those accounts are using his to establish credibility, flesh out fake identities, and build fictional backgrounds to support criminal activities. While not directly harming him (other than the cost in time of managing his account), he is nonetheless inadvertently allowing the types of activities that might be harming others and, because of the network effect, is essentially contributing to a goes around, comes around pattern that could (will) negatively impact him sooner or later.
- For my friends who are responding to all those free offers—or taking every personality and "which Disney Princess are you?" quiz available (I'm an Elsa, btw), they need to know that they are the produce in a like farm (not a a click farm, that's different).
* Oh yeah, email scams. We all know em when we seem, right? Well, they are getting better—by getting "worse." I came across this excellent answer on Quora which addresses one of the great mysteries of crappy spam. It's heartening.