FARCING – A NEW SOCIAL MEDIA IDENTITY THEFT SCAM

If you use Facebook, Twitter or one of many other social media platforms you could be victim of a new identity theft threat known as “farcing.”

Cyber criminals are using farcing as a means to access the personal information of social media users in a bid to steal their identity. Farcing is one of the many threats out there as well as “Phishing”, “SMiShing” – a scam which uses phone text messages to entice customers who unknowingly download malware or a virus onto their mobile device and “Vishing” – a telephone scam in which thieves coax users to hand over their personal information.

Farcing – new online scam stealing the identity of social media users

So what is farcing? In a nutshell, an attacker will create a fake social media account in a bid to get you to accept a friend request. Once you’re friends, all of the information you share will be available to the fake account holder. Once they have this information, finding out where you live, where you work, your birthday and all sorts of other related information is just a mouse click away. From there, it’s relatively simple to start guessing the passwords to your online accounts, based on the name of a pet you’ve tagged in a photo, a favourite place you’ve mentioned, or family names. The attacker can then use your email account to send spam, post fake adverts for sunglasses all over your social media accounts on your behalf, or perhaps far more serious, login to your online shopping and bank accounts, or even steal your identity!

A recent study on farcing was published by Arun Vishwanath an associate professor at the University of Buffalo, who said “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 carried out an experiment of his own by setting up 4 different fake Facebook profiles each one different to the other. Out of 150 Facebook users he sent friend requests to, one in five accepted, while 13% provided Vishwanath with further information about themselves.

Remember, the farcing cyber criminal is more calculating, more devious and smarter than your average scammer as they target users purporting to either be a friend, a friend of a friend, or stating that you have one or several friends in common. We are more likely to accept a friend request from someone we have mutual friends in common with, and that is exactly what cyber criminals are banking on, quite literally.

So, the next time you receive a Facebook friend request, ask yourself if you really know them? Even if you have friends in common, are they genuine? How do you know that? Remember that cyber criminals are cunning folk, they set up profiles to look genuine, using fake images of someone looking ‘normal’ so as not to raise suspicion. Once you accept their friend request – that ‘friend’ could start mining your personal information in a bid to steal your identity. And once they have your friendship, they can also see your friends list (if you have this setting open), and they can also see comments made by your friends on your wall and send them a friend request.

Cyber criminals are honing in on our social media weaknesses, targeting our Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media accounts and if you leave your Facebook privacy settings open to the public – then they can find out even more!  

Don’t be a victim of farcing – follow these tips to protect your identity on social media

With billions of us actively and frequently using social media, we make it incredibly easy for cyber criminals to zero in on us and steal our identity. Fortunately, there are ways we can limit our online social media presence, making it harder for cyber criminals to steal our identity.

• The more personal information you share, the more chance that you could be a victim of farcing – don’t make it easy for cyber criminals! Only share your personal information on social media with people you know – check out Facebook privacy watcher that will help you to know exactly who can see your posts

• There are many of us who have hundreds or even thousands of Facebook friends – accepting anyone who sends us a friend request. If you don’t know them personally, don’t accept their friend request

• Keep your personal information private. Limit the amount of personal information you share such as your birthdate and your email address

• Use a different password for each of your online accounts – that also includes your online bank account!

I think most of us have been trigger ‘friend request’ happy and accepted people we don’t really know – is it time to do a social media purge and rid your account of all the “unknowns?”

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