Alert: Facebook Messenger Scam

It’s a new year, and scammers are hitting it hard.  At least these old dogs don’t have any new tricks. Why? Because we fall for the same old crap over and over again. Don’t let this be you.

 

It’s easy to think you might know them.

I received a Facebook Messenger request from someone that I thought I knew from a private group that I belong to. It said we had six common friends, so I accepted the Messenger request.

 

Usually there are clues that something isn’t as it seems.

My very first clue that this was going south was that I could not find a profile for this person. On a phone when you hit the three dots in Messenger, one of the options should be “View Profile.” So I went to my computer to try to find this person. Again, in Messenger on Facebook from your computer, you should be able to click on the person’s name and see their profile. Instead when I click on the link to their name, it pulls up the message in full-screen Messenger.

 

Clue number two: the English made very little sense.

 

Clue number three: the person’s job title was Facebook’s Online Coordinator. As opposed to Facebook’s In-Real-Life-Person Coordinator? Online seems a little bit obvious to have for a Facebook job title, don’t you think?

 

Do your homework.

I decided to play along a little bit just to see what they are after. While carefully answering some of their questions and not giving away any information, I answered  with questions like, “What do you need?” and “What do you want?”  I Googled “Facebook Online Coordinator.” Like I said, this isn’t new. The first thing that pops up is a report from Scam Trends – from 2012!

 

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

Turns out I won the Facebook Lottery! “500,000,00 US dollars “

All I have to do is provide my

Full name
Home address
Gmail address
Occupation
Phone number
Country
State
City
Zip code

 

Everything a little scammer needs to steal your identity.

 

Don’t be a victim.

People , please don’t fall for this crap. Make sure that your less technologically savvy friends and family are aware that this does happen. (Share this post and make sure they understand how to handle a spammer.)

 

Get protected.

And finally make sure you have something like ID Shield to protect you and your family’s information online, including social media.

 

If you’re ever unsure whether someone is spamming you or not, they probably are.

Don’t be afraid to make someone angry by denying messenger requests.

Never give out your info or say yes to any of their requests.

After I told him no, he demanded that I give him the info now. I then reported this to Facebook and blocked him. In reality, you really shouldn’t interact with a scammer. There are ways to get your IP address and through that your physical address. It’s not being paranoid, it’s being safe.

#SocialSuccess What is Facebook Live?

Today on 44 News This Morning I talk with Melissa Schroeder about the new Facebook Live feature (for iphone users only at this time.)

Social Success on 44News This Morning@DanaMNelson stopped by to explain Facebook Live on this week’s edition of #SocialSuccess.

Posted by 44News This Morning on Friday, February 5, 2016

What made this more fun? My intern from the University of Southern Indiana, Jenna was broadcasting / recording the whole interview on Facebook Live. Watch it here:

We are live at 44News This Morning talking about the new Facebook live video feature

Posted by Dana Nelson on Thursday, February 4, 2016

 

#SocialSuccess – Facebook Video Upload vs YouTube

Today on 44 News This Morning I talk with Melissa Schroeder about which is better: Posting a link to YouTube

or

Uploading your video Directly to Facebook.

Watch to find out how to get the maximum impact from your videos!

Facebook Video Posting – 44News This MorningSocial Success: Talking about the value of posting videos directly to Facebook for maximum impact on 44News This Morning.

Thanks to @DanaMNelson and St. Mary’s Hospital and Medical Center: Evansville, IN.

Posted by 44News This Morning on Thursday, January 28, 2016

Facebook’s New “Pick Friends” Feature

Have you seen Facebook’s new “Pick Friends” feature? Facebook is messing with the algorithms again and rolling out a number of new features that will help them better understand what you want in your newsfeed. One of these changes is simple; you should see a box like the one below pop-up in your news feed. Simply pick your top 30 people, and Facebook will make sure next time you look at Facebook, the first posts you see are anything posted by one of those 30 people.

Pick Friends

It appears to be different than the “get notifications” feature, which is still active. So, if you’re stalking someone and get notifications for every post, no need to add them to the top of the feed. (Or if you were using the notifications feature to make sure you saw most of your boss’s or best friend’s posts, you can turn off notifications and add them to your ‘prioritize who you see first’ list.  This will save you some notification headaches.

If you don’t see this in your timeline, or you want to change your top 30 people, simply go to the top right of your Facebook page in the blue bar, and click the lock icon with the 3 bars – this will give you a drop down menu. Choose the “News Feed Preferences” item and you’ll see the pop-up below. Click to select or unselect people or pages.

Untitled image (1)FB menu w arrow

Tired of Getting Facebook Game Request Notifications?

As requested, by more than one person, today I will help you fix another annoying Facebook notification.   Your Friend has invited you to play <Insert annoying game you have no time for>

The Problem?

Annoying notifications about games and farms and crazy stuff you have no time for, and quite frankly you wonder what your friends are doing playing those games anyway.

So let’s fix it.

When you get one of the notifications like this one:   Simply hover over the notification and two things will appear on the far right side, A small circle and a small gray x. The circle is labeled, that is to say that when you hover over it, a small black box appears and says ” Read.” Note, that if you have previously read it, the circle is not filled in and is labeled “Unread.” The X is labeled “Turn off.” Click that X.   You will now be prompted with a question to make sure you really want to stop getting game notifications.   Click “Turn off.”   You now get a small print message that has two more  options.  “You will not get notifications from <Insert annoying game you have no time for> Undo  Report r spam”    That’s it. Done. Now you do have to do this for each game. Be patient. Do this every time you get a game notification and before you know it, you won’t have any game requests! #WritingFor30 What else frustrates you? I have to write on something every day for the next 30 days. I might as well answer some questions.  Follow along with the other #WritingFor30 bloggers with that hashtag.

Fix that Annoying Facebook Multiple Person Messaging Notification

We’ve all been a victim to it. Someone is having a party, needs addresses, wants you to vote for something…and they do it by sending out a Facebook message to you and 25 or more of their friends.

The Problem?

The endless notifications when each of them replies and comments with “reply all.”

So let’s fix it.

At the top of the message there is an “actions” dropdown. If you click it you get a list like this.

 

Simply click “Mute Conversation.” Now you will get no more notifications, but can step back into it and read what’s been going on at your connivance.

 

 

If you decide later that you want back in on it and want to be notified, just simply click “unmute”

#WritingFor30

What else frustrates you? I have to write on something every day for the next 30 days. I might as well answer some questions.  Follow along with the other #WritingFor30 bloggers with that hashtag.

And the Facebook changes start…

Yesterday Mashable warned us about the major changes facebook will be rolling out at the f8 conference later this week.

 

Today we’re hit with two new changes. 

First, your posts can be 5000 characters long? Ok at that point, just write a blog post and share it on fb. Think about it, if what you have to say is so important, and takes that long to get your idea across, you will most likely want people to share this thought. I know a few people who post every bit of the previous post limit, what they will do with this new limit scares me.  I’m just not a fan of this first big change. 

 

And now, late this evening, there is a new message about how users will be consuming their news. What do you think about this first wave of changes? There will be more, so fasten your seat belts facebook friends, this might be a bumpy week.

 

G+ Business Warning

Really loving the new Google+. I have seen many businesses try to jump on and use it. STOP! Don’t be tempted. It is not open for business use yet.

What if you think the rules don’t apply to you? That you will just  make a personal profile on G+, much the same way that many businesses ignore Facebook’s rules for no businesses on personal profiles. I mean look how many of them there are.  No one is policing this so called “rule.”

Think again. It will be a few more months until Google+ releases the business pages, which I hear have some fantastic features.  But if you decide that you want to risk it and have your business on G+ as a personal profile, G+ has a warning for you: “Businesses that don’t have the patience to wait for those features and instead jump into Google+ with a personal account will suffer a rather painful consequence; they won’t be able to migrate that personal account to a business profile.” Venture Beat

Don’t say no one told you.