Would You Friend This Fake Person? Probably

Distressing response rate for fake Facebook friend requests
By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 7, 2009 12:05 PM CST
Would You Friend This Fake Person? Probably
One of the profiles used in the research.   (Facebook)

If someone you don’t know, represented only by a photo of a rubber duck, tries to friend you on Facebook, you’ll probably...accept. That’s the conclusion of a study by a security firm that created two fake accounts—the fictitious woman behind the duck was named Daisy Feletin—and sent out 100 random friend requests, with about a 50% success rate. And take a look at that name again, gullible ones: Does it not look suspiciously like an anagram of “false identity?”

The other fake account, Mashable notes, was for a “Dinette Stonily"—an anagram of “stolen identity”—whose profile picture was two cats lying on a rug. Combined, the two racked up 95 random friends. Dinette even got eight friend requests directed at her, unbidden. And we’re getting even less cautious: The so-called “rubber duck attack,” the company says, garnered an even higher acceptance rate than when the company performed the experiment two years ago.
(More Facebook stories.)

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