Staff writer
The Marion County Record’s Facebook page gets several friend requests every week, but a strange one came last week.
Iva Britton was already on the paper’s friend list when another friend request from her showed up.
After messaging both Ivas, only one responded. The other profile, of the Iva that was already the paper’s friend, was promptly deleted by the user after the message was sent.
Other Facebook friends of the newspaper have also experienced fake friend requests.
Nikki Reid’s friends began getting fake friend requests from someone who had copied her profile photo six months ago. She and several other friends sent messages to the fake account but never received a response.
Kristin Ebaben of Lincolnville said a friend received a fake friend request last week from someone who had taken information from her Facebook profile.
The friend contacted Ebaben and told her about the request asking if Ebaben had created a new profile.
After discovering the profile was a fake, the friend deleted the request, only to get another request from the same person the following day.
According to the Better Business Bureau scammers will send someone a friend request, and once are friends with that person, will duplicate photos, interests, and even status updates. Their goal is to pass the profile off as real to other friends.
BBB recommends people check into all friend requests and be careful what links you click, no matter who shares it.
Poor grammar and strange symbols in the middle of sentences often a give away a fake account. Fake accounts will start posting links to work-at-home schemes or scandalous celebrity videos.
If you suspect an account is fake, alert your friends and report the account to Facebook. This allows the company to look into and shut down the account.