Look at this post above. Wouldn’t this be a great coupon to get? I too would love one — if it were real!! There are so many scammy sites popping up on Facebook lately, and this can harm YOU! These pages infuriate me. They are horrible sites preying on the desire of people to save money. Here are some that we’ve seen:
Completely Coupons
Deal Dash
Women Get It Free
These are not legitimate sites. They are only trying to collect fans so that they can turn around and sell the page to someone. If you read the privacy policies on some of these sites, they flat out state that they are collecting your information to sell it. Yep – they admit it. Do you ever read the privacy policies of sites? It might be a good thing to do before you like them.
You might want to also take a quick a look and make sure that you haven’t liked these pages! You say you know for sure you didn’t? Are you really sure? Still, take a look. You might find that there are pages it shows you like, which you have never ever visited. How in the world does this happen? Bots.
There are people out there who actually sell this service – allowing pages to purchase Facebook Fans. These page owners can pay and gain anywhere from 10,000 to 1,000,000 new fans. Once these sites pay, these companies release a bot onto Facebook, which goes through and randomly makes people like their page – without their knowledge.
You say you don’t care because just since you liked them it doesn’t mean you will visit the page. Well, it can and will hurt you. First of all, they might hack into your personal information and use that to send out additional bots to your family and friends. They can send viruses. In addition, they can make you post things onto pages and walls without your knowledge.
Have you all seen the “I just got my $500 Walmart Gift Card in the mail – Come get one too!!” posts on pages? These are NOT being made by the person who owns that page. Instead it is a bot. You never know where this came from — through a page or a link on Facebook (even the bots that made you like a page you didn’t know about). It could even be the result of a friend of yours clicking on something, which attaches you by association.
What can you do about this? There are a few things you can (and should do):
1. Clean house. Go through all of the pages you’ve liked and make sure they are page you intended to like. If not, unlike them immediately and REPORT THEM to Facebook (click the little gear on the page and then report). They need to be made aware of what the page is doing)
2. Check your Privacy Settings. Make sure that your privacy settings are turned on. Click on the down arrow by HOME at the top of the site.
The first thing is control of your privacy. If you set it to PUBLIC anyone and everyone can see it. Check to make sure it is at least FRIENDS
How You Connect – make sure this is not everyone. This means anyone can find out anything about you, send you a message and friend you – even if you do not know them.
Timeline and Tagging – determine who post on your timeline and who can not. You can also control what you see on your timeline and your tagging in photos options.
Apps, Games and websites – click on Edit Settings and get rid of all of those apps that you’ve used to get a coupon or offer. You can do this everytime you get an offer (claim it and then come in here and unattach it to your page.
3. Check your General Settings. Click the down arrow by HOME and go into Account settings.
Check Security. Make sure that you are secure browsing.
Login Notifications. Turn this on as if someone tries to hack your account, you will get a notice (so you can update your password).
Login Approvals. This is another layer to help ensure that you do NOT get hacked. You will need to set this up (so you will need to have your phone handy). I recommend that you do this to keep your information safe.
App Passwords. You can set this up to have one-time passwords you enter to use your apps. This helps keep your password safe.
These are just some of the things you can (and should) do to protect yourself from hacks and even potential viruses. Sadly, there are people who want to use your information to further themselves and don’t care who is hurt in the process.