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
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
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
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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”.
You’re welcome and my apologies for the typo. It has been corrected
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.
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.
Thanks for posting this, Joanne – nice writeup.
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….
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..)
great job. thanks. mike
Profile Spy is still on FB
Link from Feb. 1st
Here is a Swedish version:
Do NOT join these groups!
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
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