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Don’t become a victim to a Facebook impostor

Steven Petrow
Special for USA TODAY

Last week Eduardo Roman, a hairstylist in Los Angeles, took a break and (of course) checked his phone. He discovered a flood of messages, all from alarmed friends telling him the same thing: “You need to report this man in Greece. He’s pretending to be you.”

Eduardo Roman, a hair stylist in Los Angeles, says his Facebook profile photo was used by an impostor to create a fake Facebook page.

Roman checked the impostor’s page, and found his own face (with a different name) looking back at him. “I started to freak out when I saw my picture as this guy’s profile photo,” said Roman. “His pictures were all me!”

Roman quickly found the link on Facebook to report the impostor, and set the wheels in motion to shut down the fake account. He also asked his friends to follow the same steps, which many did. But Roman awoke to a surprise the next morning: the impostor had reported him as the fake, and the real Roman had been locked out of his own page.

Here’s how the message from Facebook began:

“Your account has been disabled for pretending to be someone else, which goes against the Facebook Community Standards.”

Roman had no access to his account for several days, telling me he couldn't exchange messages with his 70-year-old mother in New Jersey and his “friends from all around the world, my whole family, my godson in Cuba, my goddaughter.”

Worse, he said, Facebook took no action against the real imposter. “Even though my friends were constantly reporting him,” he said, “they never froze or blocked his account.”

A screen shot of the reply from Facebook to Eduardo Roman after he complained someone had used his photo as a profile picture.

To help Roman (and to learn more) I contacted Facebook, where Jay Nancarrow, a communications manager, said: “Misrepresenting yourself on Facebook is against our policies.” An investigation had been started, he assured me.

“This is a huge problem,” Katherine Hutt, the Better Business Bureau’s communications director, told me. Not only are there many impostors faking profiles, she said, but many of them are “scammers … doing it to steal identity and information to be sold or to build up followers [on the fake page], also to be sold.”

Unfortunately, Roman is just one of many targets of this kind of identity theft. In the past few weeks alone, I’ve had new “friend requests” from several existing Facebook friends, which the BBB’s Hutt told me is one sign of an impostor. Not surprisingly, the same kind of appropriation exists on LinkedIn and on dating sites.

THE TAKEAWAY

Take action now — that is, before you become a victim. Here’s how:

  1. Up your privacy settings: To prevent identity theft,  Hutt reminds all that “it’s about your privacy settings. If they are lax, [an impostor] can just right-click to save photos.” To better protect yourself, she said “set them as tightly as you feel comfortable,” meaning allowing only friends to see your posts and photos. Allowing “friends of friends” or, even worse, “everyone,” access is opening the door to imposters.
  2. Limit your friendship circle: Don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know. Period. Steve Toth, an Internet security expert with Internet marketing company TechWyse, also noted: “No matter how locked down your privacy settings are, once they friend you, they will likely have access to all your photos and everything you post.”
  3. Use common sense when posting photos: I know, I know, you think you do. But you don’t. Just last week a friend posted a photo of a check he’d given a non-profit (kudos to him). Even though he had marked through the account number I could still read it and could have copied it down. So no pictures of passports, credit cards, driver’s licenses, and other official documents. Since your Facebook profile and cover photo are public (no matter what your privacy settings are), Toth reminded me, “Don’t post any photos you wouldn’t want stolen.”
  4. Take action right away: If you receive a friend request from someone you’re already friends with, message them immediately to learn more. The new request will often turn out to be an impostor, said Hutt. In that case, report the impostor by using this link.
  5. Make yourself unsearchable: Go to your Privacy settings (on desktop, the little carrot next to the lock sign will bring you to settings, then choose Privacy; on mobile, touch the "more" icon and then find Privacy) and under the options for “Who can look me up?” set all of them to “No,” explained Toth.

As for Eduardo Roman, there’s good news. Within 48 hours of my contacting Facebook, he received a message informing him that the impostor’s profile had been “removed.” The real Roman is back to using Facebook every morning to reach out to his mom and his friends. And what did he learn? “You have to be alert to what’s going on and fight back with dignity. There’s really no privacy on Facebook and there are really horrible people out there. And good people, too.”

Has your Facebook identity been hijacked? What other security concerns do you have? Let me know in the comments section below.

USA TODAY columnist Steven Petrow offers advice about living in the Digital Age. Submit your question to Steven at stevenpetrow@gmail.com. You can also follow Steven on Twitter: @StevenPetrow. Or like him on Facebook at facebook.com/stevenpetrow.

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