Perhaps late to the party, I have noticed an increase in what I have termed “low key scam efforts” on a social media site. These efforts seem to be aimed mostly at women and the comments have a self-deprecating nature with subtle flattery toward the original poster. Here is one example: “I hope you won’t misunderstand … Forgive me if I have just intruded on your privacy … I sent you a friend request but it was cancelled …” Another person commented on a post, “I enjoy what you share here … I have tried to send you a friend request…” Another one: “You’re a beautiful woman and I would love to be friends with you … kindly click on my profile …”
Long ago, in a town four hours away from Indianapolis, I sat on the floor of my apartment in St. Louis, Missouri, drinking with and talking to a man who said he was an expert in computers. He called himself a “hacker,” and presented himself as a noble knight. “By hacking into their systems” he said, taking a self-satisfied sip of Rolling Rock beer, “I show companies where the weaknesses of their systems are.” I knocked back a Rock and said to him, “So: You steal people’s (stuff) to remind them to lock their doors?” He failed to see the irony.
Scams — the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology notes that the verb “scam” means “(to) cheat, defraud, swindle” — have been around long before the noun, “dishonest scheme; swindle,” which is loosely accredited to carnival workers in 1963. Scams were more difficult to accomplish in the pre-cyber days, with the scammers having to write and respond to the written and to show themselves without the benefit of photo-editing software. To be glib, suave, and personable in — well, person — took skills more challenging than an anonymous note asking that someone “kindly click” on someone’s profile. Today’s scams are often phrased in this way: “Hello Dear, thanks for sharing … you share a lot of interesting post (sic) … I’d love to be a friend …” Or this: “I love your post. You seem nice and worth talking to …” And this doozy: “(I) want us to be friends because you seems good with your humble looks…” A general lack of writing skills predominates, but I would like to think that no one will fall for that transparent attempt at flattery. But then there is another poster: “… you are gorgeous and charming … interesting and worthy of talking to.” This scammer invokes the “Big G” at the beginning of the scam as well as at the end, asking that “God bless.”
I’m unsure as to the objective of these fishing attempts, but the skeptic in me doubts that a public appeal to someone’s vanity on a social media site, is innocent. I believe that you can “Direct Message” (DM) anyone that posts on the site, so a request to “kindly click on my profile” seems a bit disingenuous. When I get “friend requests” from people that are already my friends, I know that shenanigans are afoot, and some bandit has cloned — not hacked — another person’s account. I spent years as a loan officer and debt collector and have broken open dishonest schemes to defraud the lender. Clicking on links from unknown sources is not recommended at any time, but when you get a request on a social media site from an unknown person who asks to interact with you because “you seems good with your humble looks,” I feel confident that the result is likely to be:
Scam. Bam.
cjon3acd@att.net