Slashdot Mirror
Users Can't Distinguish Scams From Facebook's Features
Anyone who's seen social media sites like Facebook has probably also seen scam ads that promise new features or insider access to the sites themselves. rudy_wayne writes Zdnet reports that a new whitepaper from antivirus company Bitdefender, which examined 850,000 Facebook scams over two years, shows that Facebook's own user experience enables these scams to flourish. The researchers found that scammers have infected millions of users with the same tricks over and over again — just repackaged. The most common tricks, such as 'Guess who viewed your profile (45.5 percent)' and 'change your background color' (29.53 percent) rely on a combination of the obsessions encouraged by the Facebook experience, and a general lack of understanding about Facebook's functionality — which, as most users know, is a constantly moving target. Users would be none the wiser that a given scam isn't just a new "feature" or another of Facebook's psychological experiments being done on users.
The others are just playing catch-up
Is to not play at all.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Who are these Facebooks and why are they on my internets?
I can't tell Facebook vs a scam... both ask for personal information, promise a fantastic experience that is never delivered, and sell my personal information for a profit...
I can see why people struggle to differentiate the two.
Yes. You should click on this to see how naive those Facebook users can be. Ha. Ha. Made you RTFAd.
So it is not surprising that people that willing accept one scam, can not distinguish other scams from the official, approved scam they intentionally use.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
rely on a combination of the obsessions encouraged by the Facebook experience, and a general lack of understanding about Facebook's functionality — which, as most users know, is a constantly moving target.
The FB UI is half the reason I don't have an account.
Thier UI is so CLUTTERED, so absolutely ANNOYING, with a constant FIREHOSE of SHIFTING posts, videos, content, etc, etc;
I get a headache just thinking about it...
Combine that with, as the article points out, the fact that their settings change constantly.
I honestly don't have the time or inclination to become a CFE(Certified Facebook Engineer) just to watch cat videos and read nutty political rants...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Facebook has a known history of changing security settings, so safe today is not safe tomorrow. Almost every major security change has been done via stealth, leaving users to race to go fix things after the fact. This is just a behavior problem with the company so not the same issue as TFA is discussing, but worth mentioning since "playing safe" is impossible when a company intentionally circumvents all of your efforts to be "responsible".
The design of Facebook is such that you can't play safe. Conversations are ordered based on "likes", not based on chronology. So you have to get "likes" to be seen in a crowd, and you gain more "likes" by expanding your profile to more and more people. Anyone wanting to be seen has to open their profile to more and more people in order to compete, so the design is to not have tight control over who can see your information. In fact control is discouraged (and what gets broken most frequently in security changes). Contrary to your last sentence, scams happen to appeal to the people that use the system exactly as intended and designed (the point of TFA).
The implementation of the moronically named "Timeline" feature which removed chronological based dialogue and replaced it with "like" based dialogue was when I stopped using Facebook all together. Prior to that, I agree that Facebook could have been used for conversations with smaller groups. Even if no "likes" are assigned to comments algorithms order your post based on content Facebook wants to be popular. Cat memes will top political dialogue if the viewership is a high enough threshold for Facebook to notice.
In the words of Nancy Reagan, "Just say No!". (probably showing my age with that quote, so get off mah lawnz!)
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Ads have been pretending to be part of website user interfaces forever now. A good website would ban those kinds of ads, but Facebook's customers (the advertisers) pay top dollar for unfettered access to Facebook's main commodity (its users). The only way that's ever going to change is if people start to leave Facebook in droves, but unfortunately it's the primary way that Gen X, Gen Y, and older Millenials communicate with each other. It's going to be a couple decades yet before Facebook's primary users age into less valuable advertising demographics, and people have already shown that they're generally unwilling to jump ship for better platforms (Google Plus isn't great, but it's a hell of a lot less obnoxious than Facebook). Me, I deleted my Facebook account several years ago, and have never looked back.
is even if you don't have a profile, like me, other people will post pictures of you and information about you which they collate, analyze, and sell as well (without your permission or direct interaction with them).
So, not playing isn't effective unless everyone you know also respects your not wanting to be there, and most won't, even if unintentionally.
Search Google for "hp support" or "sony drivers" or "microsoft support" or "firefox download." You'll see 2-3 ads for fraud, viruses, rigged download sites, etc. WHY THE HELL DOES GOOGLE ALLOW THIS?! They already got a gigantic fine for allowing illegal pharmaceutical ads. Why not block all these assholes running scams from buying ads? The same goes for Facebook. Since both companies are completely evil and make most of their money one way, the obvious answer is money. Those are hot, expensive keywords they're advertising under and the high click rate means it's probably double digit percentages of their total income. Time for the FTC to drop the hammer on both of them.
It is that way every election, whether the winners are (D) or (R). The scam is that people think that there is substantive differences between the party that is taking our rights quickly or the one taking them away slowly. But enjoy your cake an circuses.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
2o year old fake tan retards who spent all day duck-facing half naked selfies of themselves aren't up on the latest cyberscam? Where do you get this crazy talk?
Nobody summoned you this time. It was just snoring.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!