Why am I suddenly getting friend requests from all these amazing looking men?

[Sleephound]

On FB.

Obviously they're not real profiles. Very attractive photos with very little activity and few friends, it's an obvious scam, but why has my profile suddenly started attracting them?

Read the book I suggested earlier. It explains how often people are vulnerable and the scams are very sophiscated with scripts etc

If you look through your settings, there should be a way to control who can send you friend requests. I’m pretty sure only friends-of-friends can send me friend requests, not random people.

You should take a look at the channel called 'Scamfish' on Youtube!! These are scams which start out from various social media sites where contact is made from very good-looking people and even celebrities and unsuspecting targets are scammed out of hundreds and thousands of pounds. Some of the stories are utterly heartbreaking :( There does seem to be a pattern of Engineers working abroad/M15/6 agents/pilots/oil rig workers/doctors etc - all ending up needing money. These scammers are very clever and target people at their most vulnerable. It's very interesting viewing for anyone thinking of OLD.

I had a small flurry of handsome middle-aged Americans sending me friends requests on FB about 6 months ago. I ignored the lot of them, and it stopped fairly quickly.

What really irritates me about FB at the moment is the seemingly limitless supply of 'people you may know'. Hardly any of them are friends-of-friends, and most of the rest of them are totally random complete strangers from what appears to be somewhere like either Malaysia or Indonesia. It is bizarre and rather annoying.

I don't get that my "people you may know" are scarily accurate. E.g a new colleague who I have no FB links to whatsoever or the mother of one of DC's school friends. How do they know?!

Are the scams that sophisticated? Or are people just very gullible?

Someone I know split with her husband after an American marine started messaging her. It was absolutely text book scam - the guy was very easy on the eye, could never call only text. He was always just about to visit but never did quite manage to arrive. Then money started going missing from her bank account....

Everyone told her from the start it was a scam. The first message was obvious!

I literally cried with laughter at one of these the other day.

My Dh came to me all puffed up and chuffed he'd been asked to model shorts on Facebook - said "I am a BIT surprised my legs are still good enough"

I looked at him and wondered whether to put it gently to him and then realised that NO WOMAN on earth would believe this shit and this was just the patriarchy at play that my 48 year old, 3 stone overweight Dad-bod Dh believed it !

Fucking men

So I just looked at him and told him it was a scam and literally howled with laughter

He went away in the huff to sign up 😂

Well I don't want to brag but...

He actually has a surprising number of "friends" - what are people actually thinking? 🤣

I dint think it's just men
This kind of thing has been going on for years Before the Internet I would read loads of trashy Take a break magazine's, and every week there would be a article about an older women meeting a much younger man on holiday and being taken in by him and giving him all her life savings
I ts much easier with the Internet
I mean realisticly why would a young handsome Turkish waiter ,be smitten by an 69 year old Geandmother from Burnley ?

Does the online thing happen to men too?

I have a middle aged male friend who has a holiday home in Turkey. He often takes friends to stay. It's a bit what happens in Turkey...., but a lot of the friends come back having enjoyed a holiday romance with an attractive younger woman, desperate to come and visit him in UK.

Do you watch catfish on MTV ,?
Both men and women are taken in it seems
I used to work with a Turkish guy who had originally met his wife when he was waiter in a hotel in Turkey she waa a few years older then him but not ridiculously so ,they are still together ,after about 25 years now so his marriage was genuine
I also worked with a colleague who met her Turkish husband ( not the same one ) in Turkey on holiday he was also a waiter ,but they were both in their 20,s and he came to Britain and eventually opened his own restaurant ,they have three kids in their late teens early 20,s and seem very happy
So not all are not genuine .

Yep I'm getting lots at the moment, rarely use FB to be honest but it doesn't stop them coming through. Usually from the MS, usually marines, widowed, very basic profile information, few friends and photos...I block straightaway

Ooh I had the suspiciously hot foreign doctors as well, in my case shortly after a cancer diagnosis.

It’s after comments n a public post.

If you comment on a public post, like a friend’s lost cat that they set to public so it can be widely shared, all the scammers can see you.

I made a post public recently, for a specific, good reason, and all my commenting friends got approached.

Friends in common, places in common and email addresses and phone numbers.

Also these days, location in common.

My Aunt is being scammed at the moment. She is convinced that this handsome, 20 years younger man is the love of her life. They’ve been ‘together’ for two years but never actually met or spoken. She’s given him tens of thousands of pounds (at least) that she’s convinced she’s going to get back in the few weeks but never materialises. Her DS has contacted everyone, police, bank, GP, Social Services, Age Concern. They all say there’s nothing that can be done because she’s handing the money over willingly. Nothing will make her accept that she’s being scammed. She’s completely brainwashed.

I watch a lot of the Catfish type programmes on YouTube. The more awareness is raised of these scams and how they work, the better. They all tend to use the same MO, (working overseas) and move to the same calls for money ("I've got a fortune but I'm being charged to come home/be released from my contract/send the money overseas and need you to front me a few thousand quid so that I can repay you and come to you.") They all tend to use the word 'queen' or 'my queen' to describe the woman and, now, AI technology to make it look as though the subject of the profile photograph is 'talking to you'.

Blow it open, stop the shame involved in falling for scams, and a lot of it will stop. Or, at least, change form.

Best thing to do is turn off location settings on your phone and Google settings.

If you look up at business Google shows a graph of how busy somewhere is and whether it's busier than usual because location settings are on by default.

@Sparrowball I leave mine on because I appreciate that feature. It’s the same one that shows traffic on googlemaps. I value it so I cooperate with it.

Lesst yours are good looking

I keep getting friends requested by window in us - usually grey and looking 60/70 😂

The ones I get are scarily inaccurate.

What the heck did I click on one time, so that I should be inundated with all these random people from the other side of the world?

Are you a member of a single mums group? Whenever I like a post abou lt coparenting etc then I get these
Always in the navy or something