So on the news this morning there was a story about a 23 year old Canadian girl who shaved her head, eyebrows, plucked her eyelashes and starved herself in the hope that people would believe she was suffering from cancer. Using Facebook, she created a page for a ‘fake’ charity, where she received thousands of dollars of donations. This was all a (clever) plan of hers to help pay off her debts, and not even her parents knew that it was a fraud!! (When they found out they forced her to tell the truth and she is most likely going to serve some jail time).
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/08/07/2010-08-07_canadian_fraudster_ashley_kirilow_fakes_cancer_to_raise_20k_arrested.html
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/ashley-kirilows-father-told-admit-cancer-hoax/story?id=11353258
So in this day and age of social media there is always the possibility of fraud and hoaxes such as this! So should we be more wary online? Why is it that when using social media we tend to trust people and their pages, but when we receive marketing emails and telemarketing phone calls we assume that they are phony?? I have never really questioned any of my Facebook friends and the legitimacy of their Facebook pages, but I definitely go straight into ‘deletion’ mode when I receive emails that I don’t recognise.
I would love to hear what everyone thinks on this topic!
That is bizzare! This is the reason why I don't add strangers on my Facebook. What did she do with the donations?
ReplyDeleteUnwritten rule #1 for running a facebook or Twitter page is: "Place a semi naked woman as your profile picture".
ReplyDeleteThis deceptive ploy attracts an unbelievable amount of 'friends' (dirty men) providing you with a captive audience to assault with marketing messages.
Good practice; no, effective; yes
Josh: But is that practice REALLY effective? If you are measuring clicks, then maybe, but does it help the bottom line?
ReplyDeleteI think she spent all the donations (about $20,000), but I am sure they will fine her and hopefully refund everyone who donated!
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand I am not so sure that using semi-naked women would be that effective to market products/services on FB - people who accept those friend requests are probably looking specifically for semi-naked women and when they realise its a fake will probably never look at the page again....but i guess getting people to accept is the request is the hard part and it does come down to the profile picture - those photos gain interest but i think its from the wrong type of people...as you said josh (dirty men), I personally would not like to be deceived or tricked into adding a company/organisation as a friend on fb!