Are You Getting Bogus Friend Requests On Facebook? Beware!

I received this friend request just a few minutes before deciding to write this article. The "young lady" pictured above may be legit, but I doubt it."Her" profile was literally just a matter of minutes old. She had a total of 8 friends, all male. I don't know any of them. "She" supposedly lives in California, and provided virtually no information.

This is likely the work of a hacker. I get a lot of these. Many of my friends do, too. They come in waves. Over a billion people use Facebook. Many become easy targets for malicious hackers. They like to target people with a lot of friends, because they can spread viruses to a great number of users with minimum effort. Four years ago, I had to change my password four times in less than a week. Bogus friend requests have become increasingly popular. Hackers pose as someone they think you may find interesting, and send a request in an effort to access as much of your personal information as possible, especially e-mail accounts and your friends list. If you get a suspicious friend request, don't accept it. Look for mutual friends. Misspellings, and poor sentence structure are red flags. New profiles are, too. If you get a friend request from someone you think you're already friends with, check your friends list. It may be a clone.