Somewhat OT - Facebook Query

Hi all

Can anyone explain how this has happened please?
This morning I get a facebook invite from a user called Raja Manickam.
I do not have a facebook account.
Under the heading "other people you may know on facebook" are images/names
for four contacts.
Of these, 1 is a colleague, 1 is a news group and email contact, the other
two are unknowns.
The question is, how did facebook make the link to the 2 known contacts?

Just a point of interest really, but I can only think that my email address
was "mined" from the contacts held by other facebook users.
This seems like a serious liberty on the part of facebook.

Phil

"TheScullster" wrote in message
. uk...
Hi all

Can anyone explain how this has happened please?
This morning I get a facebook invite from a user called Raja Manickam.
I do not have a facebook account.
Under the heading "other people you may know on facebook" are images/names
for four contacts.
Of these, 1 is a colleague, 1 is a news group and email contact, the other
two are unknowns.
The question is, how did facebook make the link to the 2 known contacts?

Just a point of interest really, but I can only think that my email
address was "mined" from the contacts held by other facebook users.
This seems like a serious liberty on the part of facebook.

Phil


"Somewhat"???? Nothing to do with XP whatsoever!

Check its headers if you like, but I'd delete the e-mail without clicking on
any links it may contain.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...start=0&sa =N
is your friend.

"TheScullster" wrote in message
. uk...
Hi all

Can anyone explain how this has happened please?
This morning I get a facebook invite from a user called Raja Manickam.
I do not have a facebook account.
Under the heading "other people you may know on facebook" are images/names
for four contacts.
Of these, 1 is a colleague, 1 is a news group and email contact, the other
two are unknowns.
The question is, how did facebook make the link to the 2 known contacts?

Just a point of interest really, but I can only think that my email
address was "mined" from the contacts held by other facebook users.
This seems like a serious liberty on the part of facebook.

Phil


"Somewhat"???? Nothing to do with XP whatsoever!

Check its headers if you like, but I'd delete the e-mail without clicking on
any links it may contain.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...start=0&sa =N
is your friend.

The simple fact is (as the advice given by "Olórin" alludes to) is that this email IS PROBABLY BOGUS - no matter who the email "says" that it's from - there's a good chance it's not.

Basically, if you KNOW that you have NO facebook account yourself, then there's NO way you should be getting ANY emails from them.

One way to detect if an email may be bogus is the way that bogus emails often hide the "real" contents of some "links" within the text-body of that email.

To put it another way, the links in bogus emails - if you "hovver" your mouse-pointer over one - quite often the real target of the link (shown in the 'status bar' allong the bottom of the email) bears no resembelance to the text of the link as displayed in the body of the email.

Here is an (non-functioning) example :

friendly.com

....if you "hover" your mouse over this link you will see the "target" (displayed in the 'status bar' at the bottom of the email or web-page) is very different.

Only bogus and malicious emails will perform this deception as emails from reputable sources have no need to.


==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"TheScullster" wrote in message . uk...
Hi all

Can anyone explain how this has happened please?
This morning I get a facebook invite from a user called Raja Manickam.
I do not have a facebook account.
Under the heading "other people you may know on facebook" are images/names
for four contacts.
Of these, 1 is a colleague, 1 is a news group and email contact, the other
two are unknowns.
The question is, how did facebook make the link to the 2 known contacts?

Just a point of interest really, but I can only think that my email address
was "mined" from the contacts held by other facebook users.
This seems like a serious liberty on the part of facebook.

Phil

The simple fact is (as the advice given by "Olórin" alludes to) is that this email IS PROBABLY BOGUS - no matter who the email "says" that it's from - there's a good chance it's not.

Basically, if you KNOW that you have NO facebook account yourself, then there's NO way you should be getting ANY emails from them.

One way to detect if an email may be bogus is the way that bogus emails often hide the "real" contents of some "links" within the text-body of that email.

To put it another way, the links in bogus emails - if you "hovver" your mouse-pointer over one - quite often the real target of the link (shown in the 'status bar' allong the bottom of the email) bears no resembelance to the text of the link as displayed in the body of the email.

Here is an (non-functioning) example :

friendly.com

....if you "hover" your mouse over this link you will see the "target" (displayed in the 'status bar' at the bottom of the email or web-page) is very different.

Only bogus and malicious emails will perform this deception as emails from reputable sources have no need to.


==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"TheScullster" wrote in message . uk...
Hi all

Can anyone explain how this has happened please?
This morning I get a facebook invite from a user called Raja Manickam.
I do not have a facebook account.
Under the heading "other people you may know on facebook" are images/names
for four contacts.
Of these, 1 is a colleague, 1 is a news group and email contact, the other
two are unknowns.
The question is, how did facebook make the link to the 2 known contacts?

Just a point of interest really, but I can only think that my email address
was "mined" from the contacts held by other facebook users.
This seems like a serious liberty on the part of facebook.

Phil

Before anyone "pipes-up" with criticisms about how totally legitame websites use
"tiny-urls".

What I meant by "deception" was the link displayed in the email body would look like
(example) this :

http://www.friendly.com/where-i-want-to-go-to/

But would really lead you to a totally different (example) target :

http://www.cheap-hosting.com/super-scam-page8000

So the point would not be a shorter "tiny-url", but to decive you into thinking you
were going to one (full-url) destination but taken to another compleatly different
one...


==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)

Before anyone "pipes-up" with criticisms about how totally legitame websites use
"tiny-urls".

What I meant by "deception" was the link displayed in the email body would look like
(example) this :

http://www.friendly.com/where-i-want-to-go-to/

But would really lead you to a totally different (example) target :

http://www.cheap-hosting.com/super-scam-page8000

So the point would not be a shorter "tiny-url", but to decive you into thinking you
were going to one (full-url) destination but taken to another compleatly different
one...


==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)

"Tim Meddick" wrote

snip.........

Thanks Tim

Yes I take on board what you and Olórin have said.
My question relates to the mechanism used to obtain genuine contacts.
There were two of these in the scam facebook invite and I was interested in
suggestions as to how these had been harvested.

Phil

"Tim Meddick" wrote

snip.........

Thanks Tim

Yes I take on board what you and Olórin have said.
My question relates to the mechanism used to obtain genuine contacts.
There were two of these in the scam facebook invite and I was interested in
suggestions as to how these had been harvested.

Phil

The same thing happened to me.
This is what I think is happening. My friend just set up her facebook
account. I assume she sent me a request to join through facebook.
When the facebook invite got to my mailbox it searched and found a match
with another address in my address book. added it to the"Other people
you may know on Facebook:" with a picture that they use. I sent the person
who sent the invite a messege that I didn't like what facebook did
and will not join because of it. I'm waiting to hear back from her to see if
this is what happened.

Clay

"TheScullster" wrote in message
. uk...
Hi all

Can anyone explain how this has happened please?
This morning I get a facebook invite from a user called Raja Manickam.
I do not have a facebook account.
Under the heading "other people you may know on facebook" are images/names
for four contacts.
Of these, 1 is a colleague, 1 is a news group and email contact, the other
two are unknowns.
The question is, how did facebook make the link to the 2 known contacts?

Just a point of interest really, but I can only think that my email
address was "mined" from the contacts held by other facebook users.
This seems like a serious liberty on the part of facebook.

Phil

The same thing happened to me.
This is what I think is happening. My friend just set up her facebook
account. I assume she sent me a request to join through facebook.
When the facebook invite got to my mailbox it searched and found a match
with another address in my address book. added it to the"Other people
you may know on Facebook:" with a picture that they use. I sent the person
who sent the invite a messege that I didn't like what facebook did
and will not join because of it. I'm waiting to hear back from her to see if
this is what happened.

Clay

"TheScullster" wrote in message
. uk...
Hi all

Can anyone explain how this has happened please?
This morning I get a facebook invite from a user called Raja Manickam.
I do not have a facebook account.
Under the heading "other people you may know on facebook" are images/names
for four contacts.
Of these, 1 is a colleague, 1 is a news group and email contact, the other
two are unknowns.
The question is, how did facebook make the link to the 2 known contacts?

Just a point of interest really, but I can only think that my email
address was "mined" from the contacts held by other facebook users.
This seems like a serious liberty on the part of facebook.

Phil

I forgot to address that part of your question.

My theory is that email scammers simply do searches with the email addresses they get
hold of to see if they can be linked to other's and, in this case, to the facebook
profiles the resulting email addresses can be linked to.

The searches could be made in any search-engine or even using facebook's own search
feature.

I'm not sure how these scammers get hold of the original lists of email addresses.

But I would agree that it's fairly advanced for them to get hold of your name
associated with your email address plus, in this case, other profiles as well!

Normally, all scammers are able to do is get hold of lists of email addresses only.

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"TheScullster" wrote in message
. uk...

"Tim Meddick" wrote

snip.........

Thanks Tim

Yes I take on board what you and Olórin have said.
My question relates to the mechanism used to obtain genuine contacts.
There were two of these in the scam facebook invite and I was interested in
suggestions as to how these had been harvested.

Phil

I forgot to address that part of your question.

My theory is that email scammers simply do searches with the email addresses they get
hold of to see if they can be linked to other's and, in this case, to the facebook
profiles the resulting email addresses can be linked to.

The searches could be made in any search-engine or even using facebook's own search
feature.

I'm not sure how these scammers get hold of the original lists of email addresses.

But I would agree that it's fairly advanced for them to get hold of your name
associated with your email address plus, in this case, other profiles as well!

Normally, all scammers are able to do is get hold of lists of email addresses only.

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"TheScullster" wrote in message
. uk...

"Tim Meddick" wrote

snip.........

Thanks Tim

Yes I take on board what you and Olórin have said.
My question relates to the mechanism used to obtain genuine contacts.
There were two of these in the scam facebook invite and I was interested in
suggestions as to how these had been harvested.

Phil

"Clay" wrote

The same thing happened to me.
This is what I think is happening. My friend just set up her facebook
account. I assume she sent me a request to join through facebook.
When the facebook invite got to my mailbox it searched and found a match
with another address in my address book. added it to the"Other people
you may know on Facebook:" with a picture that they use. I sent the person
who sent the invite a messege that I didn't like what facebook did
and will not join because of it. I'm waiting to hear back from her to see
if this is what happened.

Clay

Thanks Clay

But the scam is doing something cleverer than that.
Neither of the known facebook contacts that were included in the scammers
message are actually in my personal contacts folder.

Phil

"Clay" wrote

The same thing happened to me.
This is what I think is happening. My friend just set up her facebook
account. I assume she sent me a request to join through facebook.
When the facebook invite got to my mailbox it searched and found a match
with another address in my address book. added it to the"Other people
you may know on Facebook:" with a picture that they use. I sent the person
who sent the invite a messege that I didn't like what facebook did
and will not join because of it. I'm waiting to hear back from her to see
if this is what happened.

Clay

Thanks Clay

But the scam is doing something cleverer than that.
Neither of the known facebook contacts that were included in the scammers
message are actually in my personal contacts folder.

Phil