Topic review: tips on how to avoid social networking scams.Say 'No' scams.

At the moment, it is hard to find people who had never heard about social networks. Almost everyone has a private page on Twitter or Facebook. Unfortunately, enormous popularity of social networks has attracted not only its users, but many scams.

Scammers have developed a lot of different ways of cheating in social networks, but their main aim is money. Almost all offenders are hunting for cash. I'm sure that most of us have negative experience of falling for their tricks. Of course, I cannot list all the possible methods of fraud in social networks in one article, but I can give you the most obvious.

Beautiful strangers

Scams can create a page on one of the numerous social network sites and spread many photos of one beautiful girl. Then they can also send many bulk emails on behalf of this girl, and send friend requests to everyone. When they have many friends in their list, they will start chatting with somebody. The actual fun begins when the scammer on behalf of the girl suggests visiting a new friend. Of course, this girl has no means to visit friend’s city. The victims of such scams, naturally, help so-called "poor girl" and send money to the indicated in advance bank account. Basically, that’s all on this subject.

Hacking personal pages

Perhaps you don’t need to be told about the meaning of the words "hacked page." By hacking people’s personal pages, the scammers have access to their emails and start sending bulk emails to friends. Those friends follow the link, trusting their so- called “friend." These mailings can contain different kind of information, but the target of the criminals is, of course, money.

Your personal page will be removed in an hour

Scams send users information on behalf of the site administration, with the requirement to confirm that they are real-life people. They offer to do this by sending an SMS to the above specified number. Then they warn that the page will be removed forever. Somebody laughs at this fraud, but many people still fall for this trick.

How not to fall for the scams’ bait

In order not to fall for tricks of these scammers, you need to follow some rules. First, you should better call your friend, who sent an SMS and check if he sent the SMS with the text you received and if not delete the email or mark it as spam. You also shouldn't “add to friends" people you do not know and think of more complicated password.