We will analyze five serious reasons why Facebook should be careful when accepting friend requests and why they should never accept strangers...
Okay, if you accept a stranger on Facebook as a friend, that's not enough to get computer (as many rumors claim), but it's definitely not recommended for the following reasons.
1. Accepting strangers increases the risk of cloning your profile and leaking your personal information.
Cloning your profile is the process of gathering sufficient personal information from a user, so that a fraudster can copy the victim's profile.
Sometimes a fraudster will gradually collect pieces of seemingly harmless personal information in order to carry out cloning of your profile.
Allowing strangers to Facebookgives them access to this personal information. Even seemingly innocent information, like friends, pet names, and habits, will help a scammer clone your profile.
Naturally you will grant access to even more sensitive information, such as your photos, phone number and address. This alone would allow a fraudster to create a copy of the Facebook account which could then be used to target your friends.
Ensuring that you trust your social circles and that privacy settings are configured correctly reduces the chances of becoming a victim of profile cloning.
2. Accepting strangers increases the risk of unwanted, malicious connections.
It is not a secret that social networking sites like Facebook become targets of exploitation by scammers who flood them with spam that can lead to a series of various scams.
Phishing scams that steal user information, download malicious browser extensions and install malicious Facebook applications. Also, they direct users to a fraudulent page, an impersonation of Facebook, that asks you to log in, and thus steals login credentials. This will give scammers the ability to access your account and spread the fraud even further.
Accepting strangers on Facebook can put you at risk, because if the stranger happens to be a scammer, they can post links on your profile or send messages in the chat window.
Of course it still requires the user to click on the links, but this increases the chances that the user will click on a spam link and fall victim to the scam. These posts on your profile also put your friends at risk.
3. Accepting strangers multiplies the likelihood of becoming a victim of a serious crime.
Criminals of all kinds use Facebook. The mass media have often reported on how underage users have been lured into dangerous meetings, where all types of crimes can occur, including sexual offenses and robberies. It can also lead to extortion crimes.
Older users or users without experience constitute another vulnerable group on Facebook, and scammers will use various scams to deceive these people and extract various monetary amounts from them (e.g., with the fake promise of returning a much larger sum of money).
Emotional scams can also occur, when the victim is lured, and sends money in some type of relationship.
Accepting strangers also puts you at other risks such as persistent tracking and harassment.
4. Accepting strangers puts your house at risk.
Would you ever tell a stranger how you will be absent and that no one is at your home? You may be away for a vacation or for a business trip or you may be at work all day. All this information is often posted on Facebook, which is fine if only trusted friends see it. Accepting strangers on Facebook gives strangers all this information and that's really not good at all.
5. Accepting strangers puts your friends at risk.
In the world of social media, mutual trust is important. If an unknown person sends you a friend request, and among their friends there is a mutual friend you trust, then you are likely to think they are a common acquaintance, which makes them seem reliable.
Thus, if you accept a stranger and they add other friends of yours, those friends are quite likely to accept the request and the claim that the stranger knows them.
This puts your friends at risk for the same reasons we described above.
Always be careful when accepting friends on Facebook and never accept strangers. Share the article so your friends are informed as well.
Source: tro-ma-ktiko.blogspot.gr
