Money grabs and pretty faces: 10 ways to spot a bogus Facebook profile

It’s a minefield out there on social media, and the spammers, bots and trolls are continually laying down new mines in new locations that are liable to explode on you if you aren’t careful.

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot more bogus friend requests on Facebook. When I started out, I used to accept most requests that came my way, but lately, I’ve been getting an increasing number of suspicious or outright phony invitations.

So, I’ve learned to become more discriminating (in the positive sense of the word). These days, I reject close to half of the friend requests I receive.

It’s nothing personal, it pays to be but as I’m getting closer to 3,000 friends, and I’m sure not all of them are trolls. But it’s hard to keep track of so many people on a Facebook feed. As an author, I want to connect with readers and potential readers, but I don’t want my feed to be dominated by faces I wouldn’t recognize if I bumped into them at the local grocery store or names that look like random excerpts from a phonebook.

In identifying unwanted friend requests, I’ve noticed a few patterns, tipoffs, and things I’d just rather avoid. It’s not a foolproof filter, but it does cut down on the headaches of curating my social media presence.

1. Check the profile picture. A lot of people like to put their best face forward online, using glamour shots, 20-year-old photos, soft lenses and the like to enhance how they appear. That’s one thing. But if the profile shot depicts a woman with stunning looks and a lot of cleavage or a bare-chested man who’d look at home on the cover of a romance novel, that should send up some red flags.

2. Look at other photos on the profile (if there are any) to be sure they match each other and the profile pic. It’s not uncommon for spammers to sub out the photo of one attractive woman for another as their profile shot.

3. Are you already friends with the person? A common hack is to duplicate someone’s profile and send out requests to people who are already friends of the original (legitimate) profile. The new profile typically clones the original’s picture, but beyond that, it’s often just a bare-bones copy. If you have a lot of friends, or the person doesn’t appear often on their feed, it’s easy to forget you’re already connected. Even more confusing: Some users have legitimate backup profiles, and others may be creating a new one because they’ve lost access to the original. If you see a face that looks familiar, search your friends list to see whether you’re already connected. If you are, study the new profile and shoot a message to the old one to find out what’s up.

4. Is there a banner? A lot of bogus profiles are slapped together quickly with just the basics. Oftentimes, the user won’t bother to put up a banner. Maybe they’re just in a hurry, or maybe this is just the latest in a series of profiles that have been reported to Facebook as spam and removed. Fake profile creators often take shortcuts because they can’t afford to put too much time into a profile that’s likely to be taken down in a matter of days or even hours. Does a profile look sparse or slapped together quickly? Does it lack biographical information, interests, group memberships, check-ins and reviews? If so, that should raise a concern.

5. What do the person’s friends look like? If it’s a woman whose friend are all male, for instance, the chances are much higher that it’s a spambot. You’ll also learn to recognize which of your own friends routinely approve these users, because they’ll appear again and again on the false profiles’ friend lists. Spammers make use of the “friends in common” feature to target users who only allow requests from “friends of friends.” I’ve gone so far as unfriending real people who accept too many requests from bogus profile users, because I don’t want such users sending requests to me.

6. Look at the person’s timeline. If you see “lonely girl” invitations to hook up or visit a risqué website, hightail it out of there pronto. This is not a real profile. (This should be obvious, but the fact that spammers keep using this tactic indicates it must fool at least some of the people some of the time.) In the absence of such a clear red flag, check out the posts. Has the content been composed or merely copied? Are they in a language you can understand? This one’s tricky, because some very real people do have friends from around the world and write posts in more than one language. But if all the posts are in a language I don’t speak, there isn’t much basis for communication, even if the profile is legit.

7. Is the gender consistent? Maybe the profile pic shows a woman, but the name is a man’s. Also, check the “about” section. Does a woman’s profile refer to “places he’s lived”? If so, there’s good reason to be suspicious.

8. Two first names? That’s one too many. Yes, some people really do have two first names (Billy Joel, Kendrick Lamar, Shannon Elizabeth ...), but if you come across a profile that’s questionable in other ways, it’s not unusual to find names like Sheila Renee or Heather Holly on a scam profile.

9. Is it a new profile? Not all new profiles are bad. Every Facebook user was new to the platform at some point. But the fact is that something like one-quarter of the planet is already on Facebook, so there are fewer people left to join. The chances are therefore higher, just mathematically speaking, that new users aren’t legitimate.

10. Is the profile all about asking for something? The requests can take many forms. The most blatant is the aforementioned romantic come-ons (usually links to pay-for-porn sites). But there are also variations on the common Nigeria scams, promising more money at some later date in exchange for wiring financial “help” now. Some profiles aren’t fake, but they exist almost exclusively to promote a product. If most or all of the posts on a profile are ads, or if the user name is that of a company, I’m not interested.

I’m sure there are more telltale signs of bogus profiles, some of which may target women more frequently than men. If you know of any, feel free to leave them in the comments field. And as they used to say on Hill Street Blues, be careful out there.

We let the trolls out, and now they're running the show

“Don’t feed the trolls,” they say.

Good advice, but it’s not that easy these days.

Our lives have become a Facebook group, a Twitter feed, a Reddit thread. We haven’t just immersed ourselves in those things; it’s more pervasive than that: We’ve started to rebuild our society in their image. Welcome to the social media experiment of the 21st century.

It’s an experiment we started without any clear plan to prove our hypothesis. Hell, we don’t even have a hypothesis. We’re flying by the seat of our pants into a radioactive “social laboratory.” Whether we’ll make it out in one piece is anybody’s guess.

The new reality

Mass communication has always played a huge role in defining us as a society. We’ve read our daily newspaper, gathered around the radio for fireside chats, watched newsreels and fantasies at the local theater and vegged out in front of the TV. But this is different. Those media — with the exception of the occasional letter to the editor — were all passive, and that allowed us to keep the trolls safely tucked away under their bridge, where they belonged.

Social media have changed all that because they’re, well, social. Who let the trolls out? We did, and they’re not confined to chat rooms and message boards anymore. They’re running around loose in the real world, wreaking havoc and doing their best to tear our social fabric to shreds.

Take this Milo Whatshisname, for instance. This self-described “dangerous faggot” goes around the country on a speaking tour designed to piss people off. The more outrageous he is, the more outrage he provokes. People get angry and protest, which leads to media coverage and — voila! — the attention he’s been seeking. Game over. The protesters are playing right into his hands.

But in an era when trolls are running amok, having escaped the confines of the computer screen, do they really have much choice?

The troll’s game

Imagine you run a social media group. You set some ground rules, start sharing ideas … and inevitably, a troll finds his way in.

He hasn’t been there long before he starts causing trouble. He rails against you for refusing to delete something he finds offensive. Then he accuses you of censorship when you delete one of his posts – ignoring the fact that it violates your ground rules. That just means (according to him) those rules should be changed. In fact, he says, he could do a better job of running the group, and he lets everyone there know it.

Now imagine you can’t block the guy, and members of the group can’t leave. He’s got a captive audience, and even though a lot of members tune him out, a lot of others start listening because he’s so loud and insistent he’s hard to ignore. He finds out what they’re angry about, and he tells them he’s angry too; then he takes that shared anger and directs it at you.

It isn’t long before the guy dominates the group’s discussion. Ideas don’t matter anymore. All that matters a single question: Are you for the troll or against him? The question has to be resolved, so the group decides to vote on who should be in charge, you or him.

In fact, however, the vote doesn’t really resolve anything. Whoever wins, the other side feels alienated. But remember, no one can leave. The troll doesn’t really care who wins: All that matters to him is that he’s the center of attention, and he’ll still be the same attention-seeking drama king regardless of the outcome.

The group, meanwhile, has become dysfunctional and paralyzed. As long as it’s spending all its time talking about him, it can’t be bothered to discuss actual ideas. To look for innovation. To work toward solutions.

A world without rules

“Wait a minute,” you might object. “That stuff doesn’t really happen on social media. There are safeguards. You can block people. You can leave groups.”

And you’d be right.

But this isn’t about social media anymore. It’s about what happens when you take the culture of social media and apply it in the real world, where those safeguards don’t exist.

In the real world, trolls can get elected, and you can’t leave – unless you’re wealthy enough to emigrate, and assuming you want to abandon the place you’ve called home all your life.

It’s easy to avoid feeding the trolls when they don’t have power. When they do, it’s a different matter entirely. Do we ignore them, knowing they’re just in it for the attention? Will that rob them of their power? Or do we actively oppose them, fearful that this very thirst for attention will motivate them to keep pushing the envelope … until it falls off the table into the rubbish heap?

Social media aren’t to blame for this dilemma. The fault is ours for thinking we can apply the rules of social media to real life when we can’t.

Over the past decade or so, we’ve systematically imposed the social media template on the real world. We’ve created a culture in which break room conversations sound like rhetoric from Reddit; where science and pragmatism take a back seat to ideology; where politicians decide to campaign (and govern!) via Twitter.

And where the trolls are running the show.

They’ve escaped from under the bridge and want more than anything to put us there instead. It’s a bridge we built ourselves using social media, and if we’re not careful, it’s going to come crashing down on all of our heads.

Pithy Comebacks to Buffoonery on Social Media

I recently attended a book signing by bestselling author John Scalzi, where he read a selection from his blog titled "Standard Responses to Online Stupidity." There, he presented some witty rejoinders to online buffoonery. (My favorite: "My attention is a privilege, not a right. This is all you get.")

Since he's graciously featuring my guest contribution on his website today, I thought it might be fun to come up with a few comebacks of my own for use in similar situations. I've tied them to a few well-known axioms. Some of the results are particularly cutting, and I doubt I'd use them on anyone short of a mortal enemy (of whom I don't have any). But please don't tell anyone, as acerbity can be an effective deterrent.

1. Your logic leaves something to be desired. Just not by anyone I know.

2. No, Teddy Roosevelt did not say, "Type loudly and act like a big prick."

3. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Which explains why you're so crabby.

4. Discretion is the better part of ... a concept you're obviously not familiar with.

5. He who fights and runs away online is more commonly known as a troll.

6. I'm sorry, but faith can't move mountains if you put yours in a broken bulldozer.

7. Take your ball and go home. It's overinflated anyway. Oh, wait, that's your ego.

8. Cat got your tongue? My mistake. He's in the litter box, which must mean you're full of ...

9. I'll give you the benefit of my doubt. Here's my doubt. Now go benefit from it.

10. I'd be happy to make a gentleman's agreement, but you'd have to be a gentleman.

11. I won't just agree to disagree with you. I'll celebrate it with a trip to Disneyland.

12. I'm afraid that, in order to be a man of your word, you'd have to be literate.

13. If you've learned from your mistakes, you must be a full-blown genius.

14. A penny saved isn't worth spending on your thoughts.

15. If at first you don't succeed at arguing online ... do us all a favor and give it a rest.

16. I'll give you special dispensation to judge a book by it's cover, since it's clear you've never looked inside one.

Note: These work for Facebook, but since they're all fewer than 140 characters, they're nicely suited to Twitter, as well.

Ten Species of Troll

Here are 10 species of Internet troll I've observed and cataloged in my study of the Wild, Wild Web. Recognize them. Avoid them. Lead a much happier life without them.

1. Stalkers. Attention seekers who need others' responses to feel validated. They follow you from one page to another, leaving comments on whatever you post. The problem is, you never know whether to treat them like lost puppies and scratch behind their ears, but this just keeps them coming back for more.

2. Lurkers. The next stage in the stalker's (d)evolution. Having been banned or blocked, they stay quiet and hide behind bogus profiles, conducting online espionage. Like the rude but distant relative who invites himself to Thanksgiving dinner, they feel they're entitled to a place at the table, even after they've been asked to leave.

3. Imposters. Critics who masquerade as a member of a certain group, they wait until the time is right, then ambush members in an open forum - sometimes with self-righteous religious rhetoric, sometimes with ads for fake Ray-Bans. I'm not sure which is worse.

4. Backstabbers. They air their dirty laundry to the world, slamming a spouse, relative, "friend," boss or some other third party who's (conveniently) not around to defend him/herself. They smile in your face. All the time, they wanna take your place ...

5. Know-it-Alls. These ego-driven types pose as authorities to gain "minions" as though they'd been chosen for the lead in Despicable Me - even though the lead character in that animated film is far more three-dimensional. Like stalkers, they want validation. But instead of targeting a single person, they cast a wider net in an effort to build a cult-like following. They're usually not authorities on much of anything. But that doesn't stop them from pontificating ad nauseam on their favorite subjects.

6. True Believers. The minions or clones from No. 5, who follow Know-it-Alls pretty much blindly, faithfully memorizing their scripts and robotically regurgitating their lines. Clones? Dittoheads? Do people actually take pride in these labels? Sometimes the Web is far too similar to bad talk radio, and you've just change the station.

7. Button-Pushers. They get a rise out of people by posting uncompromising positions on hot-button issues. On the one side, they get a lot of attaboys; on the other, they receive plenty of criticism (often spiced up using colorful language). Either way, they're out for attention, same as the Stalker and the Authority. They're motto: All publicity is good publicity.

8. Victims. Often Button-Pushers who pretend to be persecuted for their beliefs, they fly the "minority" flag as though it were a battle standard - whether or not they're actually in any minority. One favorite tactic: saying something outrageously offensive, then crying "censorship!" when the owner of the wall or page removes their comment.

9. Advocates. People who take up a single issue or slate of issues and draw a life-or-death line in the sand, then dare others on Facebook to cross it ... which, of course, they do, leading to sometimes amusing but mostly aggravating repercussions. They produce more litmus tests for than your eighth-grade science teacher and flunk you if you answer one question in a hundred the "wrong" way.

10. Devil's Advocates. The people who fuel the Button-Pushers' fire, their goal is, like most of the others, to gain attention - but their method's a little different. They're counter-punchers. They wait for someone else to state an opinion, then look for a weakness and pounce when they think they've found one. It's purely a game of one-upmanship. The Devil's Advocate who can beat the Know-it-All in an argument has pulled off an effective Facebook coup and can build a following of his/her own.

Illustration: John Bauer, from Walter Stenstrom's The Boy and the Trolls or The Adventure in children's anthology Among Pixies and Trolls, a collection of children's stories, 1915 (public domain image).