There are scams and then there are....

[BirdbyBird]

All the talk about scams, most of us recognize them and see them often. What I also see daily but don't understand is how everyone posts on the "name" game sites, or copies and plays or forwards the ever information rich posts about favorite ?.... or things you might not know about me rambles. I agree that they all appear entertaining and fun until you stop and think about, technology being what it is, how easily bits and pieces of information you give up about yourself can be gathered up and stored till just enough come together to give a hacker another piece to the puzzle of who you are and more ammunition to be hacked. I know that FB is easily hacked. I do enjoy keeping up with family and friend's pictures and adventures. I don't need to be added to any of the random sites generating innocent appearing "inspirational" memes, save this child, copy and forward this or you won't be one of the ten good folks on my list....., that is not what I use FB for and the risk is too big.

[cnq50b]

I agree. The less a person clicks on and/or responds to, the safer they will be. As Tina says they will piece all the little bits of info you give away, so don't fall for these gimmicks & stay safe.

It seems there are also a flurry of emails being sent now, encouraging people to 'open immediately' or 'you're been awarded something.' - I probably delete 50-70% of all emails I receive without opening them.

thanks for the reminder, Tina.

[OregonLuvr]

I agree Tina, I dont click on any of those either. I get enough scam emails some days. "YOU HAVE WON...." No, I havent. I really do like FB tho but you have to be smart about it. I like to keep up with friends on FB and keep up with things people are doing or where they are going. I also like a few forum groups for RVing, Cooking, My Tibetan spaniel group. The local scanner groups etc.

[MandysMom]

I agree. I have warned my friends when I end up seeing the post they just replied to with info like those. I am using FB blocking to block as many as I have time to do. I give up reporting because I have reported obvious spam, only to be told by FB that it didn't violate their standards. Wish I could give up FB but it's a major way I stay in touch on some locked private groups.
Velda

[Colliemom]

I agree too. I read about how those sites that you talk about, do exactly what you said. They piece together information and then they pounce or infect your devices. I’ve been getting a lot of those crazy emails too and I just delete them. They are getting more and more clever.

[MandysMom]

Actually Sue , "they" don't pounce! Their sole job is putting together packages of your information to sell in bundles to the criminals who come after you with various schemes. The better, more inclusive the data pavkage, the more paid for the bundles, which are sold over and over!
Velda

[MandysMom]

If you have a Internet provider for your email, you can sign into your email on webmail. Go there and look for a button to give you option to white list (the email senders you approve) and black list the ones you don't. Black listed emails then get automatically dumped in a spam folder, which you can visit every so often to take a look to see which are correctly marked and dump them and which their software wrongly put there and you can move to inbox so they come to your email. That way the junk and spam and dangerous to your computer stuff never even enters your computer (because you are looking at it on the providers site, not actually downloaded on your computer). It's like having safety glass between your computer and bad stuff! Took me awhile to figure this out (son taught me how)!
Velda