thedynasty1998 wrote:
My neighbor just had something like this happen. He didn't tell me all the details, but from what I know someone added him. He granted the request and they starting sending him messages about wanting to exchange nude pics or the like. I'm not sure the extent of the conversation.
But anyways, they ended up trying to extort money from him or they were going to tell his wife they were having an affair. They knew where he lived, car, work and phone number, not to mention who his wife is.
He ended up getting calls all the time and threats and had to change his phone number and file a police report.
The police said it's become more and more common that these things are happening.
Wow! Thankfully, this is not the norm for these people, but that is still terrible to hear!
These are typically men, actually. In the last couple years of doing online marketing, I've become fully aware of who these people are and what they are trying to do.
They are known as "e-whores." What they do is, they pretend to be girls who are all rather similar in demographic. Usually, they are athletic or petite. Typically between the ages of 18-21. Skimpy dressers. Shameless in conversation. Sexually aggressive.
Why? Because they know that a lot of men (and some women) would kill to be friends with such a girl, for obvious reasons. Once they build up a substantial list of friends, they contact you by whatever remote means they can: E-mail (if you have it on your Facebook page, as many do) and Facebook PM being the most common, though telephone isn't outside the realm of possibility, either.
Anyway, in the contact, they usually tell you they want you to get on a particular site for some reason or another (to video chat with them there, to see X-rated pictures of them, to talk to their friend who's even hotter, etc.). They give you the link to the site.
Now, the site is probably harmless, as far as your computer goes. In fact, the site itself is probably legitimate. However, most legitimate business sites (sites that are used to make money) have what is called Affiliate Marketing programs, which means they pay people to do their business for them.
How this translates is that the link you went to isn't actually the site's link. Instead, it is an affiliate link, which means that the site can track who sent you (based on the URL, though cookies have been used to do this too, but again, they're usually harmless). How the site pays its affiliates may vary. It could be that the site uses a program called a "lead gen" program, which stands for "lead generation." How this works is that the signup for the site is probably free, and they'll pay the affiliate a very small amount for someone signing up. Then, however, they'll use the contact information collected during the signup process to market to the individual who signed up. This, in and of itself, is not bad, but it can get annoying. If they run a legitimate business, you'll be able to opt out of receiving the marketing contact rather promptly.
It could be, however, that the site charges a small fee to sign up, and the person who referred you gets a percentage every time someone signs up.
Now, the odds that this will work on a single person are slim. The odds that it will work on somebody within a group of 10K men with Facebook accounts, though, is pretty good.
Hence, these "e-whores" are playing the odds to make money, and they're doing it by using a tool that is free to the public: Facebook.
If you ever get a link in a PM or E-mail from a Facebook friend (even one you know), I'd encourage you to run it through the LongURL website. What that does is, it tells you how many redirects there are in the link (Redirect is a URL that leads to another URL). If there are between 0-2 redirects (1-3 URLs), you're probably okay. Any more than that, and you can be sure that the person has made a real attempt to cover his or her tracks to stay anonymous, which is suspicious at best. If you really know what you're looking at, you can usually contact the site and get the e-whore affiliate cut off without being paid any outstanding commissions (something that really pisses them off).
Fly, you have my personal permission to PM me any such messages you get again. I can then collect some info on the person and either try to get them shut down, or at least tell you whether or not the link is a problem or not.
E-whores are an interesting bunch. The successful ones are almost always men in their 30s-40s, who are obviously shameless enough to pretend to be women.
