Have I unearthed a scam on Facebook?

See Everyone Who Views Your Profile!! is an EVENT on Facebook. Here are the details, taken from the Event page on Facebook: 
__________________________________________________________
Type: Education – Workshop
Start Time: Sunday, 28 February 2010 at 06:30
End Time: Wednesday, 30 June 2010 at 09:30
Location: Internet
Description:
Now its 100% possible to see that who views your profile or spying you!!*
Follow these simple steps to see it:
Join this Event "Click on Attending"
Invite all your friends to this event.
Final Step is to Signup from link given below** :
tinyurl.com/WhoSee
or
www.tinyurl.com/WhoSee
(Copy this link & paste it in your address bar and then press enter)
(You must Signup/Login & change your privacy settings in order to see who views your profile)
● How you Can Join????
● In "Your RSVP"
● Click on "Attending" From Right Side

Note: After clicking on Attending Please Invite at least 50 of your Friends to This Event to Confirm your Membership.

  • Its works with feboz only
    ** You can signup with toolbar (Toolbar is used only for signup and make easy to use network. Toolbar has no connection with above mentioned feature)

This event has
 76,904 confirmed guests
__________________________________________________________
I visited the url and discovered that Feboz is a social networking site and its logo looks suspiciously like a Facebook rip-off.





A message from the administrator of the Event says: 

To sum up:
See Everyone Who Views Your Profile!! is a 4-month long educational workshop that is being conducted in a location called the Internet.
To attend it, you have to invite ALL your friends  (or at least 50 of them), visit a website that looks like a Facebook rip-off, download a toolbar, CHANGE your privacy settings and first 500000 members of this Event will get IT free, without specifying what IT is.

The Event is created on Facebook by a guy called Arun Ganguly who has 54 friends (on FB).

Arun Ganguly’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000753071457

Now add all that information up, read this article at http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/01/how-to-spam-facebook-like-a-pro-an-insiders-confession/ on how unscrupulous advertisers/elements exploit loopholes in the Facebook system (and our lax attitude to security) to access personal information, and the ramifications can be scary.

I don’t want to find out by ‘attending’ this Event. If someone out there is ‘attending’, tell me I am wrong.

Or, maybe I am just over-reacting.
I hope I am.

Comments

  1. Kudos Deven for taking this huge effort. This guy Arun ganguly is a huge scamster. None of the links on his site work and all he's interested in his getting everyone to get more and more people to divert their friends to this site and record those clicks.

    I am guilty of having lured at least a dozen if not more of my friends into this racket and we must certainly do something about it.

    This works on a simple principle of human propensity to know what others think of them and who are the ones visiting your facebook profile. In retrospect, does it really matter. If the person who visits your facebook profile wants to know a little more about you, you have anywhichways defined your access settings and those who can would be allowed to do so. If some of them find you / discover you after so many years (a latent desire facebook and other social networking sites build their traffic upon) so be it. If he/she doesn't, too bad. There are far too many opportunities in today's age and world to reconnect with your past if you are really keen on doing so.

    I think at the end of the day, we are sitting ducks to such opportunists who will always find a loop hole in all we do if only we allow them to. Social networking sites meet a need amongst us to connect without being too intrusive. In our quest to reach out to as many as we could, we tend to give away the reins to our responses in the hands of unscrupulous elements like Arun Ganguly only to later repent being made a fool out of.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not much of an effort Sanjay. I had recently read the tech crunch article and happened to click on this profile thing today. It all adds up. I have also posted it here: http://www.rememme.com/story.php?title=have-i-unearthed-a-scam-on-facebook-1: A website that recently invited me to publish my posts on it. So hopefully more people will be aware. Hopefully not only about this, but about online security in general.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for taking the trouble to look into this.

    I have no interest in any Facebook apps, let alone one that (as you said) requires changing privacy settings and installs a toolbar.

    Some of my FB friends take an interest in this and
    I'm going to link to your post

    BTW- can you please change your privacy setting on this Blog, I'm just trying to protect you from spammers.
    I won't look where I'm not supposed to-- I promise.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's quite a name you've chosen for yourself Mr. Wilharm. Honestly, it doesn't inspire much confidence.
    I had also 'reported' the event to FB and they've taken it off. But I am sure there will be others.
    Can you please educate me on changing the privacy setting on this blog? I am tech-challenged... so.

    ReplyDelete
  5. What are you talking about?

    Randy Wilharm is my legal name. I was born with it and
    Facebook has NOT removed anything on account
    of your efforts. The site can still be found here:

    http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=302354190554&ref=nf

    Another thing:
    I just looked at your profile and noticed
    you are from India, so I pose a question:

    Do you eat meat, fish, or eggs?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Randy, the English word, crossed the Atlantic and was Americanised into Horny. On that background your name does sound suspiciously adult movie screen name types. And we all are prone to stereotyping, aren't we? So I will ignore your meat, fish, or eggs question.
    Anyway, no offense meant Mr. W.
    Also, I jumped the gun and commented.
    You are right: FB hasn't removed anything; it just has disappeared from my home page. The event is modified slightly: There is no Arun Ganguly as creator. I wonder why.
    And thanks for posting a link to the blog post here on your FB account.
    Now if you could throw some light on the blog privacy settings comment, I might answer about my dietary habits.

    ReplyDelete

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