Amazing how even in this modern day and age of people becoming more and more familiar with technology how we can still be fooled by scammers and bots. (A “bot”, for those that are not technologically savvy, is an automated program designed to spam you till you cry pretty much.) Sure, we know how to tell whether or not somebody that’s sending us an email is legitimate, and most sites that you go to these days have a “captcha”, which is designed by nature to determine man from machine.

However, it’s funny how we still fall for the old trick to this day. Of course now, bots are using social networking sites like <a href=”http://facebook.com”>Facebook</a> to get their message across.

And if this starts sounding like a public service announcement, trust me, it is.

<a href=”http://facebook.com”>Facebook</a> has been seeing a lot of this going on lately, where someone will come on board, and start sending out friend requests like nobody’s business. And then, once they reach a certain amount of friend requests sent within a certain timeframe, Facebook will ask for that particular user to slow down the friend requests or the account will be suspended. But yet, somehow, Facebook’s initial efforts don’t seem to work as well as I’m sure they’d hoped, because the bots continue to send out requests after waiting a certain time length.

Once these bots have enough friends, that’s when they start sending nasty messages to the user via wall, instant message, or P2P message. Mission accomplished.

While this may seem like a nuisance, it’s a security breach that could end up getting a lot worse. Who’s to say that the friend requests stop at spam bots? Next thing you know, your <a href=”http://facebook.com”>Facebook</a> account is hacked into, your password is changed, and goodbye Facebook account.

So if you receive a friend request from somebody, do what I do and make sure it’s legit. If there are mutual friends, ask the friends that you do know if that person is legit before accepting that person’s friend request. If you know the person who’s sending you the friend request, even better.

Because while a blind leap of faith can sometimes land you on your feet, 90% of the time, you’re just jumping right into a bottomless ravine.