The fake Facebook profile industry
Two stories that I remember about this:1. Sextortion scam for personal gain
Back in 2002 i was using MSN Messenger as a teenager, being like 17yo and full of testosterone, I accepted any girl wanting to share intimate details with me. There was one local girl, chatting with me for 2 years, but always had excused for not opening her cam. I was sharing intimate details while being on cam, but finally stopped, as she never wanted to meet me, despite living 20km away. She always had excuses.
Two years later, I was dipping again into script kiddie stuff and trying out some trojan generators, combining it with an exe cryptor to make it undetectable for the early anti-virus tools. I contacted that girl again, and told her I had some new videos of my holidays. Sent it to her (holiday-in-france.avi.exe) and two mins later I was on "her" PC.
Turns out it's a local guy, 5 years older than me, having like 100 folders named after local boys, where he kept videos, screen grabs and photos neatly organized. Most of them underage.
Fortunately I found a word document with his resumee, even with a photo of him.
I reported that guy to the feds the same day.--2. Sextortion with the wrong guyYears later I migrated to an asian country. I now speak the local language and have a second Facebook and Skype profile that I only use for local contacts here, that I barely know and who are not family, friends or business contacts.Every now and then some fake russian/eastern european girls try to add me on Skype or Facebook randomly. This time those girls are real, they even start a real webcam conversation.But this time I'm prepared, being interested in infosec and online since the early 90ies and prepared because I was scammed before (see story 1.).Those girls quickly start skype video calls, where they try to scam guys. Me, knowing this scam for years, had a laugh and continued the video chat, also sharing intimate details with them, and who says no to watch a beautiful girl undress herself and sharing her sexual preferences?After usually 20-30 minutes of showing off on the camera, asking my sexual preferences and begging to add me on Facebook, they will change the tone of the conversion and try to blackmail me. Since I knew the scam, I was laughing and telling them, that my whole online presence is fake and all the profiles they have from me are filled with fake friends. They swore at me and immediately blocked me on Skype and Facebook.Happened several times.