Advance 419 Fraud Still Lives

Advance 419 Fraud is one of the oldest and infamous Internet crimes that still manages to operate online. Many consider this type of crime (also called Nigerian fraud) one of the easiest to spot - after all, how many people reading this are going to respond to a Nigerian banker who has just informed you that you are the beneficiary of millions of US dollars from a recently deceased businessman abroad. Not many, since that is what we know now to be the classic 419 trap.

But like all crimes, 419 fraud has evolved and has sparked many variants that may follow the same template, but are a lot harder to dismiss as fake.

One of these is the 419 romantic scam, or Nigerian romance scam, that baits victims with the promise of friendship and relationships, as opposed to the more traditional cash reward. While many still consider this type of scam relatively notorious, this week it has proved to be very much live and well after it was revealed that a woman from the UK was scammed for a huge £80,000 by an Internet crook who pretended to be a soldier.

Kate Roberts was taken by the scammer - who was later traced back to 419 capital Nigeria – over a period of many months, where the scammer requested many cash payouts, for a “telephone line” and “release documents” to travel back to the UK. What made this con much more convincing than many others is that it included telephone calls from many different “characters” in this fictional play that the cyber criminals created.

What is more, is that the cash payouts were to be paid via online wire transfer service Western Union, a massive red flag when it comes to cyber crime.

As always, be on the lookout for 419 scammers on every corner of the Internet. Romance scams like this can be started through unsolicited email, social networking sites or dating sites. Never hand over money to people you have never met online, and always be very wary of requests of payment via Western Union.

Related articles from our site –

Nigerian Romance Scams


Western Union Scams

The Most Popular Facebook Applications that Never Existed

Everyone who uses Facebook will know about Facebook applications, and the majority of Facebook users may recognise or even tried to install certain applications that purported to offer certain, shall we say, intriguing services. Here is our list of applications that many a person claimed they created, but never actually existed.

The Profile Stalker Application – this is the application that claimed it could tell a Facebook user who exactly was viewing their profile the most, i.e. who was stalking you. Of course, third party developers do not have access to this information, and displaying this information would be in violation of Facebook’s privacy conditions, so no application has ever been able to tell anybody who looks at their profile or how often they do so. Most of the applications were scams, and many others just picked several random names from the Facebook user’s friends list and claimed these were the Facebook user’s top stalkers. Untrue, however.

The Facebook Dislike Button – many Facebook users will be aware of the various online campaigns to get Facebook to add a Dislike button to allow users to dislike posts or comments made by other Facebook users. This led to a plethora of applications (and groups) that claimed to “officially” offer the Facebook Dislike button. Of course none ever did since third party applications cannot alter Facebook’s source code and any official adding of the feature would not depend on users installing an application. To this day there are no plans to add such a feature, and no application can include it.

Viewing Private Profiles Application – need we confirm that you cannot install applications that allow you to view otherwise private profiles and information? Apparently we do, since these applications are the most prolific. The only way to view profiles is to become friends with those profiles. There is no other way, short of becoming an exceptional programmer and hacking Facebook. No application can, will or has even been able to view private profiles, so do not even bother, or you’ll find yourself the victim of a rather obvious scam.

See Who Blocked/Deleted You – much like the applications that claim you can see who stalks your profile, it is also against the privacy terms of Facebook to see who blocked or deleted your account. Facebook does not notify you if someone deletes you, so if one day you were friends with someone and could access their profile, and the next day you’re not friends and cannot access their profile, you’ve probably done something to tick the other person off, because you have been “defriended.” You don’t need an application to tell you that, which is just as well, because they can’t anyway.

Change Your Facebook Theme – just like the dislike button, no application can alter Facebook including the theme (or account type, if you fell for the Facebook Gold hoax) so any application claiming it will change your theme or revert you back to an old layout was just lying. If Facebook do decide to change their theme, you won’t have to run a Facebook App to get it.

Also worth a mention are the applications that claim to tell you your first status, display your first picture, or applications that claim to tell you who you have had the most interaction with.

These applications have never existed. If you fell for any of them, then back luck because you were duped.  Can you think of any others? Feel free to post them below.

Facebook Instant Personalisation - Invasion of Privacy?

It's 2011, and we trust you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! This is our first post of 2011 and for it we will be re-visiting a hoax that spread through Facebook virally back in 2010 but has reappeared this year.


If anyone has heard of Facebook’s Instant Personalisation, it’s a feature Facebook launched last year that allows select external websites to obtain basic information about a Facebook user before they visit that site. This is so when a Facebook user visits such a site, it is instantly personalised for them – meaning it will display their name and profile picture.


Whilst the movement caused minor controversy from hardcore privacy activists, the feature really wasn’t that controversial since the information given and displayed on these sites was only very basic information available to anybody, regardless if they were a friend or not.


However like any change Facebook makes regarding the sharing of information, alarmist messages like the one below began to circulate between Facebook friends warning users in an overly alarmist way, implying this was some sort of massive invasion of privacy.


ATTENTION ALL FB USERS----VERY IMPORTANT For those of you that didnt see this per CNN news....facebook will be allowing our profile pics on the web..please do this now.... GO TO Account, Click on Privacy Settings >>Applications and Websites>> UNCLICK Instant Personalization...and PLEASE TELL EVERYONE ABOUT THIS!!!

However these over-the-top messages, which were designed to panic Facebook users, were loosely based on truth, since Facebook users are automatically opted out of the Instant Personalisation feature. The feature, now available on 7 sites partnered with Facebook (including Yelp, Rotten Tomatoes and TripAdvisor) has only the ability to share information that you have already made public with everyone, and since you have to explicitly opt-IN to the service, there is no need to pass on the many deceptive messages floating around Facebook about Instant Personalisation.