One can’t imagine how jarring it must be for droves of people who cared deeply for a person to the point of donating money, and almost kidneys, to suddenly discover that said person had been a fraud all along. Nigerian Twitter is still reeling from the collective dupe it just suffered from what is no doubt a very talented Twitter social engineering racket (investigations are still ongoing). Let’s call them the Royal Amebo Gang. These guys make the Manti Te’o saga look like a really funny sitcom.
Now that Royal Amebo’s ultimate endgame has been revealed, people must be wondering who they can love, trust and set P safely with on Twitter. In that pressing concern, you aren’t alone. Here are five things to look out for in your latest internet squeeze. If they are absent, breathe easy. If they are present, you might be in the process of being catfished.
1. They don’t have a selfie
– only the most stone hearted haven’t taken a selfie for the Internet. At the very least, they have taken a LinkedIn selfie, so this is a pretty good filter. Remember, a person’s existence isn’t established by one selfie, but by a multitude of selfies that look sufficiently alike and in a sufficient variety of scenarios that prove that said person indeed functions like a part of 21st century human society.
2. They don’t show up on Google
Even if they are part of the more stolid minority internet that cannot be bothered with selfies, everyone on the Internet has some sort of internet footprint that should show up in a search engine. In any case, it is perfectly implausible that someone who is a business strategist, U.S certified life coach and United Nations youth ambassador, all of which @RoyalAmebo claimed to be, wouldn’t leave some kind of Google trail. But she doesn’t. Because she isn’t real.
A cursory google search for a person’s name will usually bring up stuff about their education, professional affiliations and personal relationships. If it doesn’t, sound the alarm.
3. Nobody has met them
– And even that isn’t fool proof. For a con as “conplex” as the one pulled off by the Royal Amebo gang, they could have spoof accounts planted specifically to give the main hit account legitimacy, like is being speculated here.
Some people might raise the straw man argument that if you haven’t met @BarackObama, proceeding on this logic means you cannot trust him. That is an unreasonable stretch. The context within which this advice is useful is for online personas that you intend on cultivating intimate relationships with. If you are gonna get hot and heavy, or start exchanging bank info, commonsense is to take it offline, and not just make certain that they are real, but that every other thing checks out. And if you are going to meet someone from the internet, do it in a public place. You don’t want to get kidnapped.
4. They have only one social media account
Say Twitter, but they don’t Facebook, check in on Foursquare, shoot grainy selfies on Instagram or try to sell themselves on LinkedIn. Again not fool proof, especially when you are up against professionals, but a useful place to look.
5. If they ask you for money, kidneys and stuff
This is the ultimate red flag. At this point, no amount of caution is enough. Nuff said.
People get duped by close friends and relatives all the time. People they know in real life. But with these tips you are less likely to be the next juicy catfish to fall prey to sharks online.
Final word – social engineering is real, and the worst mistake is to assume that it can’t happen to you. Creating a fully developed online persona that apparently walks and talks and enters into hot and heavy relationships which sadly are no more real than if you tried to date Apple’s Siri must take some mad skillz, not to mention the patience of a bank thief. Royal Amebo got some supposed digital natives real good. One of them is considering erecting an eternal monument to his folly.
You can never be too careful. Stay sharp. Stay safe. And always keep it real.
Photo Credit: pierre pouliquin via Compfight cc
