Last Updated on by SCARS Editorial Team
SCARSSCARS SCARS - Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Inc. A government registered crime victims' assistance & crime prevention nonprofit organization based in Miami, Florida, U.S.A. SCARS supports the victims of scams worldwide and through its partners in more than 60 countries around the world. Incorporated in 2015, its team has 30 years of continuous experience educating and supporting scam victims. Visit www.AgainstScams.org to learn more about SCARS.™ Guide: Clones – Copying Profiles & Identities
Cloning: Can My Real Grandmother Please Stand Up?
Let The Scamming Begin!
[lwptoc]
Portions from Anonymous
Most Of Us Have Heard Someone Say This:
“Someone Cloned My Profile”
And they alert you that their profile must have been cloned!
(The other over used favorite term is “someone hacked by profile”)
The Urban LegendUrban Legend Urban Legend An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend is a genre of modern folklore comprising stories circulated as true, especially on social media. These legends can be entertaining but often concern serious topics. They may also be confirmation of moral standards, or reflect prejudices, or be a way to make sense of societal anxieties. Urban legends are most often circulated orally but can be spread by any media, including newspapers, mobile news apps, e-mail, and social media. Some urban legends have passed through the years with only minor changes and seem impervious to exposure as untrue. is that almost every account is being cloned. Your picture and your name have been used to create a new Facebook account and they don’t need your password to do this this (which is true) – they just copy everything – because you let them.
They want your friends to add them to their Facebook account, then your friends will think that it’s you and accept your request.
From that point on they can write what they want under your name and the scamming begins
Someone Is Always Sending Out Messages Alerting The World About This!
Sometimes it is a real problem, sometimes it is just someone freaking out
Is this accurate? No, not really, but scammers do clone profiles – that part is a fact.
We all know that scammers need an endless stream of fake profiles – different names, different faces, different content. But what few realize is how incredibly hard it is to do this. With over one billion fake identities online, this is a task bigger than inventing the atomic bomb!
Scammers are, after all, not lazy but they are practical and limited in the time they can spend on each fake identity. They have to budget their time for maximum effectiveness. This means that by definition they have to be fast when creating new profiles.
So They Clone
They do it because it gives them a real, rich identity they can control, but more importantly, it gives them the ability to “mine” a new ecosystem of victims – YOUR FRIENDS and FAMILY!
With each new victim, they look for how rich your profile is – how many people you are connected to. Quite frankly if you accept them and you have a very large friend-base that they can see (meaning you have not limited visibility to your Friend’s List) – they see you as a “fat target.”