The Social Media Scam: Precautions To Take!

Social networking is the in thing for celebrities now. Various stars like Oprah Winfrey or Ashton Kutcher are now keen to become a part of the social media. Be it politicians, or athletes or even the common man – being a part of the social media seems to be the latest fad for many.

While social networking can definitely help you to enhance your online visibility, at the same time it can land you into trouble if your profile is hacked by someone or some one creates a fake profile in your name. In fact this is a trend that is increasingly common. There are many a celebrities whose names have been used to create fake profiles. What is surprising is that in most cases the social media sites are silent in this regard. So what could be the solution for this? Well the answer is simple – one needs to book the social media profile earlier than the scammer. Once the profile is booked in your name you would be safe!

Whenever you are using a social media site the basic rule is that you need to check carefully the profile you are interacting with. Keep in mind that a profile which claims to belong to any eminent person might well be a fake one. At times, the deception can be too subtle to spot. With the hackers gaining in their skill, it is becoming even more difficult for the veterans to identify the fake profiles. So, when using a social networking site, you should be very careful about these kind of fake profiles. What is more is that you need to be careful that your identity is not stolen by such scammers who abound in a social networking site.

According to experts, the task of stealing anyone’s identity is not a difficult one, since there is no identity verification when you register an account with a social networking site such as Twitter. So, any body can come up with an email ID, and by altering few letters, he or she may appear as anybody that the person wants. This can be used to deceive others. Sometimes, the users don’t even have any idea that their accounts in the Twitter are hacked. However, the Twitter is mysteriously silent over the issue. They have even not commented on how many profiles have been cancelled so far because of the charges of impersonation. In fact, their policy to the impersonation has made the scene even fishier.

Twitter permits the parody impersonation. This is allowed when a ‘reasonable person’ is aware that the profile is a joke. However, the entire concept is very much blurry. There are thousands of such profiles that look very much real profile of famous persons like Bill Gates, Condoleezza Rice or Osama bin Laden. There are fake profiles of important media personalities as well. While such profiles of celebrities are often considered to be a joke, for a common man such fake profiles can bring forth various legal implications.

In fact experts believe that the phony profiles – be it of the common man or the celebrities - can have dire consequences. For example, one can create a celebrity profile and declare that an upcoming program that was scheduled to be held has been called off; this might be fake news. Needless to say that such an event would certainly have a huge impact on the person which would not be a good one.

According to media strategists, this act of impersonation is very much against the concept of social networking. It can damage the brand image of a person or a product. Social networking sites are evolving strict policies to prevent such crimes. Twitter has asked the users to contact the Terms of Service group if the person suspects that he or she is the victim of impersonation. Only a careful and early detection by the real user can help one to stop such crimes.