A new Facebook hoax is spreading across the country, with many falling victim within the past week.
Thousands have been hit by the new scam.
At its base, the scam is harmless. Victims receive a weird message from friends and family simply asking them to “ignore” a friend request.
But KCTV5 spoke to a tech expert to see if there are any consequences for accepting friend requests.
In this case, the message warns users to stay away from a suspicious user Jayden K. Smith.
The chain message says, ‘Jayden is a hacker and has the system connected to your Facebook and contacts.’
What’s weird about the scam is that it’s a hoax. There is no Jayden Smith. And even if there were, simply accepting a friend request wouldn’t put someone at risk. Unless a person has info on their profile they wouldn’t want a stranger to see.
And that’s the warning that Burton Kelso, a Kansas City area tech expert, wants people to know.
He says people need to make their friends list private.
Many do not do this, but lately, people are taking the pictures from a victim’s friends profile, creating fake profiles and then contacting the victim asking for money while posing as a friend.
Kelso says people are losing both their money and their privacy through the up-and-coming scam.
“What is going on is hackers are creating cloned Facebook accounts of users and then sending out friend requests to their friends and once you accept those hackers will send you emails that try to lure you to sites that will either infect your computer or lock up all your files,” Kelso said.
Kelso recommends taking down any private information such as birth-dates and years, but also interests and hobbies that may seem harmless in a persons about me section.
A combination of a birthday and favorite pet or animal, for example, are commonly used as a password to something like a bank account.
And users who don’t keep that information hidden could be placing it directly in the hands of a scammer.
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