Facebook Scams Facebook has a very large user database. It is the hottest social networking site in town as of the moment. Many people switched to Facebook from sites like MySpace, Friendster or Hi-5 because of the security and simplicity of its interface.However, you can't always expect things to go flawless, as there are always a dark spot in a white paper, which almost always go unnoticed, until one with a keen eye point it out. This is what happened with Facebook's lax approach on some of their features, specially the Fan Pages. Because Facebook is a very easy to use website and almost every user can create fan pages, including real companies, it's an easy target for cons and narrow-minded people who would take advantage of someone's vulnerabilities if given the chance. I'm talking of the 'normal' Facebook scams that happen every once in a while. Scams in these social communities are pretty normal, but Facebook has made it easier. Just create a fan page for a very popular company or product and invite users to join in its first hour of existence. The next hour, you got hundreds of others joining the page, and more and more for the next few hours. Offer a great (fake) deal of discounts and promos and surely, people will come rushing. Take for example a friend of mine who was recently scammed in fake remittance company fan page. He left a message on the fan page's wall about a remittance he failed to receive for more than 2 weeks. He inquired if he can still get it, and a so-called representative contacted him via private message. The 'representative' asked for the control number so they can check if its still available for pickup. Next thing they asked if a scanned copy of his membership card. After that, he never heard anything. When he went into a local branch to follow up on his online inquiry, the store assistant said they are not affiliated with any Facebook fan page and that the control number had been picked up a few days ago. Apparently, the perpetrators used his scanned ID to perform the money transaction. When he went to check the Facebook fan page, it's not there anymore. I don't know, maybe Facebook can add a flagging system so people can be warned of potential fan pages or for fa pages of huge companies, they should at least perform a verification process and put a verified logo on legit company pages, like that of Twitter's Verified Accounts. If not, things like this will happen and will never end. | 
