Scam Alert: Profile Watcher – Know Who is Viewing Your Profile 24/7 – Updated Jan 15

UPDATE JANUARY 14th

 

The original group shown below has been turned into an IRON MAIDEN fan club!! The creators changed admin names, renamed the group and the details. Here is what the original link was:

We did some searching, and the Know Who is Viewing Your Profile 24/7 group name is being used to start a few more groups:


UPDATE JANUARY 15th

 

The Iron Maiden group above has now been terminated by Facebook. However, there are still the replacements shown above. Read the original post below to be informed!

ORIGINAL POST DETAILS

 

Profile Watcher Scam

Once again we have another Profile Watcher/Profile Spy group, called , attracting way too many members. I received numerous invites to join this one over the weekend, as well as postings to my wall about others who had joined.

The group once again claims that after inviting all your friends, and having at least 50% accept, you will be provided with a link to the application. This simply is not true.

Firstly, tracking someone’s surfing habits on Facebook is against their terms and conditions, and is stated as such in their developers manual. No application or game is allowed to insert any such coding that pulls any sort of information beyond profile content that could be required for the app/game.

Secondly, if it is a valid application, why the need to require a 50% acceptance of a group invitation? A valid application will be set up as an application – not as a group or fan page.

Thirdly, it is impossible for any group, application or fan page to know how many people accepted an invite. Again, this is against Facebook Terms of Service.

As for this particular group, you can see from their instructions below that they require the usual “invite all your friends”. This should be a warning to any people joining any group. Most groups, including our own, ask that members share the group info with their Facebook friends, but no valid group should detail a specific number required, or a specific acceptance rate.

Profile Watcher Scam Instructions

 

Profile Watcher Admins

Another warning to note is the 4 admins listed. The creator, if his picture is even him, looks to be a teenager. The remaining 3 admins have no picture. All four have absolutely zero profile information available, meaning they have no friends; are members of no pages; and do not accept any friend requests. This leads me to believe the accounts have all been created specifically to create this group.

 

Already over 250,000 people have joined this group and with the rate I was seeing it fly over walls yesterday, I except it won’t be long before hundreds of thousands more are potentially scammed.

Help stop the spread of these groups. Be diligent about what you invite your friends to join. If you want to join and peek around – that is your prerogative, but be wary of what you pass onto others

 

 

Comments

15 Responses to “Scam Alert: Profile Watcher – Know Who is Viewing Your Profile 24/7 – Updated Jan 15”
  1. Teaflax says:

    Thanks for putting this down in black an white so I can just link instead of explaining it to each and everyone who fell for it. Also, its “peek around”, not “peak around”.

    Reply
    • Joanne Dolles says:

      You’re welcome and my apologies for the typo. It has been corrected

      Reply
      • Dictionthief says:


        These people made both a fan page and group for a “profile watcher.” They also are trying to promote their “sponsor” on a group and fan page, which they also are admins of.


        Reply
  2. Lockesly L'Crit says:

    Awesome write-up. I have a friend who joined, and, like Teaflax said, it’s easier just to provide the link than write out why it’s a scam each and every time.

    Reply
  3. Kris says:

    Thanks for posting this, Joanne – nice writeup.

    Reply
  4. thoos says:

    thanks for the write up!!

    what i would like to know though is why do people create such scams? what information are they trying outsource and for what purpose? what is the main reason for creating scams of the sort? is it to try gather information from members to de-fraud them or steal money etc, i dont quite understand why people create scams if there is no purpose for what they are doing?

    does facebook admin have people investigate such scams and try prevent, disable or disallow such groups? and if it truly is a scam (after investigation findings) surely facebook can just ban or remove this group? and save members from whatever harm these groups make….

    Reply
  5. Maureen says:

    Makes you wonder if “Iron Maiden” is that worried about NOT having any ‘fans” left.. LOL (I like the group, always have, but if they condone this, hmmmm may have to change my opinion of them..)

    Reply
  6. drmiket says:

    great job. thanks. mike

    Reply
  7. Karen says:

    Profile Spy is still on FB

    Reply
  8. Spamcop says:

    Here is a Swedish version:

    Do NOT join these groups!

    Reply
  9. GeekDrop says:

    I wonder if I ran into a similar new rogue app? Check out the behavior described in this thread: http://geekdrop.com/content/facebook-feed

    Reply
  10. Gayle says:

    Here’s another group going around saying you can see who is viewing your profile! It’s called:
    ProfilePeep – See who views your profile! !/pages/ProfilePeep-See-Who-Views-Your-Profile/339452463090?v=info&ref=nf

    Reply

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