How To Avoid Facebook Scams

There's a special name for the way scammers manipulate victims like this: social engineering. While it's true that malicious hackers known as crackers sometimes pierce a system's security by using various software tricks and hacks, it's also common for people to willingly give up information. The scammer just has to make the victim want to share. There are a couple of common ways scammers trick people into sharing:

• They appeal to the victim's vanity with a message that suggests the victim can be seen in a compromising or funny way at a certain website. The link to the Web site actually leads the victim to downloading malware
• They make promises of get-rich-quick schemes
• They tempt the victim into sharing a credit card number, then commit credit-card fraud

Read the full article for more information and for ways to protect against Facebook scams.

Source. Via HowStuffWorks.