Beware: Social Media and Cyber Crime

I commend REALTORS® for their adoption of social media. Although there are some who make a nuisance of themselves on social networks, most are great. The simple strategy is to be real, and don’t always slobber your marketing over all of your friends. Remind your friends that you provide real estate services – but don’t try to sell on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn – just keep people informed.

Be careful too!

If you recall the early days of email, before spam filters, your email inbox was cluttered with hundreds of messages (some quite graphic in the Adult sense). These nefarious people have now moved along to Facebook and Twitter. In fact, you may already be getting spam, or seen a friend’s Facebook account get hacked.

Hackers are aggressively probing Twitter and Facebook for security holes to gain access to anything they can get their hands on. The hackers work in tribes. If a hacker finds a security flaw – he tells every hacker he knows and they all attack at once. The guy who discovers the way in to Twitter or Facebook  is revered by his peers. I think the whole thing is sick, but the lure is real. They get paid $1 for every click they generate – and a good hack can generate thousands of dollars a day.

Recently, spammers found a flaw in Twitter’s mouse-over feature. Anyone who simply moused over a corrupted tweet caused an identical tainted tweet to be sent to all of his or her followers. Don’t worry, its fixed now, but it is still a good example. Facebook has had their issues too. These companies usually fix them within hours.

Here is a rule of thumb. Do not follow or friend people that you don’t know in some small way, or who are connected to people you do not know. Not that you should be scared of meeting a stranger, but be smart about it. On Facebook, you can send them a message. On Twitter, check out their website link or read through their tweets. The point is, do not just automatically accept every friend request on Facebook or follow everyone back on Twitter. Take the time to see who they are – you never know – it may become your next client or best friend.

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