Protect your Identity: Don’t Accept Fake Friend Requests!

We all want more friends, but actual people who are legitimate facebook users… and it’s also nice to have met them in person before.  That’s my general rule of thumb when accepting any friend request: have you met this person in “real-life” before?  If yes, accept.  If no, then forget it.  They are most likely scammers, phishers, or some other form of identity thieves.

High School Friend Networks are Easy Targets

Face it… the scammers/phishers know you’re not going to remember everyone from high school.  And they use this to their advantage.  They’ll build up a nice network of your highschool friends (especially in your graduating year) and then lure you in with that ‘reputation’.  Don’t fall victim to their trickery.  Check out what you can do…

Signs to look for that are dead-give-aways:

• Profile photos of hot girls in scandalous situations
• Network of ungodly number of high school friends
• No friends at all
• 1000 friends added in the last day
• No pictures
• No wall posts
• No profile in general
• You have not accepted their friend request before but they keep sending them (duh!)

What to do in this situation:

1. Don’t accept the friend request

This may seem like a no-brainer but I wanted to put it on here anyways.  Take a look at this example fake friend request:

If we investigate further by looking into their limited profile view we see:

2. Find any friend requests you may have accepted in the past and delete them.

If you have accepted some random friend requests in the past then it’s probably best for you to delete them now.

Here’s another fake friend request image:

3. Ask some of your friends if they have any clue who this person is…

Your friends may have a better memory than you.  Face it, you’re getting older and at this age you can’t blame yourself for not knowing everyone you went to high school with!

4. Report it to Facebook (not sure how much good this will do but it’s worth a shot…)

Facebook is lazier than a Tucson bum but hopefully if they get a bizillion emails they’ll fix something.

5. Google the facebook friend request person’s name (most likely you won’t see sh#@)

Hey maybe if they are reputable they’ll have some sort of footprint on Google!

Beware of this:

Download the Visual Studio Project Files Here

Please note: It's in 7zip Format (Free Zip Program).

Here's a view of the code used in the video above:

Form1.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace NestedLoopsItemFiltering
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        private ObjectCollection _collection;

        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

            _collection = new ObjectCollection(comboBox1.Items.Count);

            for (int i = 0; i < comboBox1.Items.Count; i++)
            {
                _collection[i] = comboBox1.Items[i];
            }
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (comboBox1.SelectedItem != null)
            {
                listBox1.Items.Add(comboBox1.SelectedItem);

                FilterItems();

                comboBox1.SelectedIndex = -1;
                comboBox1.Text = String.Empty;
            }
        }

        private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (listBox1.SelectedItem != null)
            {
                listBox1.Items.Remove(listBox1.SelectedItem);

                FilterItems();

                comboBox1.Focus();
            }
        }

        private void FilterItems()
        {
            ComboBox.ObjectCollection parent = comboBox1.Items;

            ListBox.ObjectCollection child = listBox1.Items;

            parent.Clear();

            for (int i = 0; i < _collection.Count; i++)
            {
                parent.Add(_collection[i]);
            }

            for (int i = 0; i < child.Count; i++)
            {
                for (int j = 0; j < parent.Count; j++)
                {
                    if (child[i].ToString() == parent[j].ToString())
                    {
                        parent.RemoveAt(j);
                        j = parent.Count;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

ObjectCollection.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Collections;

namespace NestedLoopsItemFiltering
{
    class ObjectCollection : IList
    {
        private object[] _collection;

        public ObjectCollection(int capacity)
        {
            _collection = new object[capacity];
        }

        public int Add(object value)
        {
            throw new NotImplementedException();
        }

        public void Clear()
        {
            throw new NotImplementedException();
        }

        public bool Contains(object value)
        {
            throw new NotImplementedException();
        }

        public int IndexOf(object value)
        {
            throw new NotImplementedException();
        }

        public void Insert(int index, object value)
        {
            throw new NotImplementedException();
        }

        public bool IsFixedSize
        {
            get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
        }

        public bool IsReadOnly
        {
            get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
        }

        public void Remove(object value)
        {
            throw new NotImplementedException();
        }

        public void RemoveAt(int index)
        {
            throw new NotImplementedException();
        }

        public object this[int index]
        {
            get
            {
                return this._collection[index];
            }
            set
            {
                this._collection[index] = value;
            }
        }

        public void CopyTo(Array array, int index)
        {
            throw new NotImplementedException();
        }

        public int Count
        {
            get { return this._collection.Count(); }
        }

        public bool IsSynchronized
        {
            get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
        }

        public object SyncRoot
        {
            get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
        }

        public IEnumerator GetEnumerator()
        {
            throw new NotImplementedException();
        }
    }
}

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