Fake Suicide Attempt Tests Facebook Prevention Tool, Lands Man In Asylum

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 19, 2015 @02:04PM from the I-guess-it-worked dept.

First time accepted submitter abhishekmdb writes Shane Tusch faked his suicide in an attempt to test the authenticity of Facebook suicide prevention tool and got detained for 72 hours. Facebook has rolled out a set of tools to keep a check on its users who are having suicidal tendencies and prevent these users from suicidal attempts. In case some user is having suicidal thoughts and mentions that in the Facebook posts and if a friend of that user reports it to Facebook then a third party will immediately review the post and Facebook would lock the suicidal user's account and the user will be made to read Facebook's suicide prevention materials.

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Re:Great example by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-19 18:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

Since Facebook doesn't verify your identity when signing up for an account.... how long before the bad guys start setting up fake accounts or hacking FB accounts and ransoming people?
Example would be: "Pay me $1000, or you will be picked up the police and put in mental institution. [insert pmt instructions]"
New tool gives the bad guys the means.