Be careful when you get a friend request on Facebook. Scammers and spammers will try to get you to accept such a request in order to lure you into their various schemes.
I’m writing this today because I got a friend request from a good Help-U-Sell Broker, which I accepted. Almost immediately, he started a Facebook Messenger conversation with me that was . . . just odd. This broker would have said different things about different topics. Soon he was talking about the International Monetary Fund, and my crap-meter went off.
I quickly went to his Facebook News Feed and saw that he had posted nothing except his profile picture. I also saw that half a dozen other Help-U-Sell Brokers had accepted his friend request. Then I did what I should have done when I got the request: I searched Facebook for users with his name and, bingo, two profiles using the same name and photo showed up.
I went back to the Messenger conversation and told the person I doubted he was who he said he was and he assured me that was not so. So I asked him a question I KNEW the real person would know . . and the faker couldn’t answer. I unfriended him and messaged every other person I could see who had accepted his friend request. I also alerted the real person that someone was impersonating him.
Rule one with Facebook Friend requests: if this is someone you know, check first to see if you aren’t already friends on Facebook. A scammer will copy your real friend’s picture and name, set up a fake Facebook account then send friend requests to all of the real person’s friends. Then they will engage you in a text conversation that usually involves you clicking on some kind of link. Once you’ve done that, they’ve got you. The link usually facilitates the downloading of some kind of virus or malware onto your computer.
Rule two with Facebook Friend requests: if you don’t know the person, don’t accept! I know: Duh! But if there is no basis for this person interacting with you, their motives for ‘Friending’ you have to be suspect!