Social Media Spam & Fake Accounts Beware

In the last few years, as technology of communication across the world has become a lot easier with transmitting information instantly across the world with just a single submit, post, or publish button. The world has come a long way with all that and it is incredibly amazing where technology has taken us. Some for the good, and some for the bad. The bad part about social media, e-mails and accounts are spam and fake ones.

I am sure some of us or if not all of us have encountered people saying “If you follow me, you can get instant thousands of followers back”, and then you see these accounts with fake usernames with so many numbers and a name with it like “Joy34342432456” or profile’s with suspicious fake photos, and then they try to add you as a friend, but you don’t even know them. After they send you e-mails saying “Hey, I saw your profile, you look great, and I want to get to know you and some sort of stuff” I am just getting so tired of all these bot’s and fake accounts that are circulating the internet.

I think the most important priority for these social media website creators, and those who work for these social media companies especially the IT, Security and safety teams, should really begin to clean out fake profiles. I know it is easier said than done and sometimes these fake profiles, hackers and everything made it so complicated to tell, but I can tell right away if it is a fake account.

So many things to look at when dealing with a spammer and fake account holder. here is my list:

– They only have 1 photo of themselves or they don’t have a profile photo and they put a picture of a unicorn or something. That becomes suspicious

– When they do not post anything on their profile pages.

– When you hashtag *#* or write about a certain thing on Twitter, an automatic bot will detect people’s status messages and retweet, like and follow you.

– They spam people to look at adult content videos

– They tag you in potential virus content that will mess up the security of your computer that will steal your passwords, and personal information.

– When they say, follow me and you get thousands of followers

– when there are e-mails that are like this “3535serger345gvdrgererwaefqw@swewed34325435fsfsada.com”

and so much more.

You must be so careful on what you add, who you add on your social media accounts.

I am going to begin to set up a petition online for these social media, and e-mail companies to really start cracking down on fake accounts, bots, and spammers to delete, remove and clean up the internet. Instead of focusing on new layouts, exciting new features and updates on these social media outlets, They should really be focusing on and managing security and safety of all the other users, by making it a little harder in the beginning when signing up for an account to ask several questions, to “I’m Not a Robot” or some sort of captcha, number to type down before creating a site, and go through extra steps to ensure safety and security of us all.

We should also be helping out these social media outlets. If you do see something that is not right or if you feel that you are being followed by robots or whatever, tell your social media outlet, report it, send an e-mail or whatever the case maybe, and they will investigate it and deal with it. There are millions and millions of accounts on these social media outlets and Facebook has over 1 billion people worldwide using it, so it can be quite difficult to combat all these accounts, so we as account holders should help them out and report these fake people or IF we can even call them that to them. It is so important.

Do not be discouraged of joining the social media world, just because of these things that are happening. Social Media outlets are awesome and it can be a fun, enjoyable and great place to keep in touch with loved ones, share photos, status messages and everything. I am not deterring anybody from this age in technology, I am just merely suggesting and advising people to really be so careful on who you add, and everything. If you do feel that it is suspicious, please report the account and delete and block it.

Have you been a victim of social media spam? What have you encountered?

Best wishes always, and remember to make wise decisions when Spammers and Bots come to you. best thing to do is to ignore, delete, report and then block. The social media outlet will see that it happened, as everything is on file at their end. Just be safe and enjoy social media.

Tips to Keeping Your LinkedIn Profile Professional

In the professional world since 2002, CEO Jeff Weiner and founders of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman, Konstantin Guericke, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Allen Blue and Eric Ly took resume building to an all new level to becoming the World’s largest professional network. The headquarters are located in Mountain View, California, but have offices everywhere across the world now. There are over 400 million users and the site is available in 24 languages.

It is also a place where employers can submit job postings for those who are seeking it, getting in contact with managers, supervisors, CEO’s, presidents, founders and so on and so forth.

Now, there are some people who think of LinkedIn as another social media outlet. So, people begin to share all kinds of information such as being married, sharing a profile picture that is meant for other social media outlets, not keeping that to a professional manner. Well, here are tips to keep your LinkedIn Professional. If you have an account that is.

— Always choose a professionally done profile photo or allow someone to take a photo with your camera. Make sure it is clear and not dark. do not have photos of you and your other half, a picture of you and your pet, a picture of you at a party, a drink in your hand, do not post ones of you with your others friends or family members. The whole purpose is just about you.

— Never share your relationship status, if you are married, single, divorced, widowed or whatever the case maybe. Employers and other professionals should not know that information.

— Do not share your full birthdate. If you like to add just the month and the day you can. Never reveal your year of birth.

— Do not add everyone as friends and think this is Facebook, Twitter or whatever else in Social Media. This is meant to be a professional network of potential employers, people you have worked with, and those that know you in that manner. Be very careful on adding spam and fake accounts.

— If you go and look up other people’s profiles, there is a way to track people who are looking at your profile. vice versa. there is an icon that you can do that.

— LinkedIn is supposed to be Social Media free, but they implement that. Do not post status messages and hashtags things not related to business, school and at a professional level.

— Do not go overboard with endorsements. That makes you look over -qualified. Also telling people to give testimonials. That should be automatic from other people if they enjoyed working with you, doing business with you, then they will come forward to write something about you. Do not request it from others.

— Refrain from joining way too many groups for the sake of joining them. Join the ones that are in relative to you and ones that you will contribute to.

— Always keep professional, always update your profile, engage with other people who share similarities with you and those who are at your level.

— They say to pay for LinkedIn Services to get more out of it, and to see the full list of people looking at your profile, you don’t really need that. A regular profile is just good enough.

Best wishes in your professions, careers and whoever is looking for employment.

How To Stay Safe When Answering Telemarketing Phone Calls

For the past several months I have been getting many phone calls from different telemarketers ranging from winning a cruise vacation, a weekend getaway, spas, Cancun, Duct Cleaning, Surveys, Alarm Systems, Medical Surveys, so on and so forth. I am just so sick and tired of these telemarketers who call my home during dinner hours, or during the day. I am getting so frustrated and when I say I am not interested, they still keep calling and I keep saying do not call here anymore. I am extra careful when answering these phone calls. No pressing of numbers on my phone, no nothing because these people are trying to steal your identity and make fraudulent crimes, and your whole bank account and savings can be wiped clean. It is very important to keep yourself safe from these phone calls. It is getting out of hand and I am so fed up of everything. I am not happy at all. One time I did go on the do not call list and then again these phone calls started coming back again. For a while we didn’t have any, but recently, its been getting out of hand and I am so extremely tired of answering unimportant calls. sometimes I am taking a nap or doing something important, I rush to the phone to pick it up to a stupid phone call and I get so mad. Today was unbelievable. I can’t take it anymore. Something needs to be done.

I always see these crazy types of numbers appearing in my caller ID, and it is ridiculous to see all this all the time. I want to give you tips on how to stay safe on the phones:

1 – Never give out your credit card information

2 – Never press on numbers they ask you to press on your phone

3 – Never give out your personal information and answer surveys,

4 – say, I am not interested, and or do not say anything and just hang up when they start talking.

5 – Do not ever assume they are real companies that are calling you, and ask you for your energy bill or your cable and phone account. These companies should know what you have, so why are they calling you right?

6 – If you believe that its a legit call, ask a few questions and play at their game.

7 – NEVER ever say you don’t have an alarm security system. ALWAYS SAY Yes we do.

8 – Always make sure that you don’t say anything extra on the phone because it can be recorded, so you just hang up and say bye

9 – When Duct cleaning services call, I say Sorry we have not ducts(ducks), you can clean our chickens. Most of the time they hang up before I even do. Its pretty funny.

Always stay safe and don’t give into phone calls that easy.

They always find tricks to trick you. Do not be fooled.

Stay alert and stay safe.