A fascinating and eye opening article on Tech Crunch (techcrunsh.com) about how spammers abuse Facebook and other social networking sites, ripping people off and making good money. Written by one of the top spammers himself.
An excerpt:
“Did you know how Mark Zuckerberg supported Facebook in the early days, before he got venture funding? Casino ads. And how about those advertisers who were making over $100,000 a day selling Acai Berry and other weight loss products – they are friends of mine, pioneers of new advertising channels. You see those ads saying “Inbox (5). Nick, someone in San Francisco has a crush on you!” (with your name, profile picture, and city in the ad). I generated millions of dollars from these offers on Facebook – I am not proud of it, but it was very lucrative.
“I will walk you through how these online scams work on Facebook and other social networks – the mechanics of how the money is made, some of the people involved, and who is actually clicking on ads. If you’re reading this article, there is a good chance that you are not the type of person actually clicking on these spam ads, but are you curious as to who actually is?
Here is the link for the whole article.
There is a long list of comments to which I thought it best to make some clarifications:
@James, Interesting how some people think that you can be honorable without being ethical.
Honor comes from being true to yourself, and last time I looked being true to yourself had nothing to do with what you feel like doing for the moment. You stand up for for right against wrong and do unselfish deeds.
Man is basically good and wants to help his fellow man, this is the area to look in when you search for being true to yourself. Justifying ones actions is only done because deep inside you want to like yourself and your actions.
Morals is limited to what is best for a specific group, may it be the mafia or police. Whilst ethics deals with best survival for all, where all win.
Fortunately you can do all sorts of bad things and change your mind and become a good honorable person. But it has to include this step of making up for the damage on the same order of magnitude as one has created.
A honorable person can make a mistake in the heat of things, committing some unethical action, but will have to figure out how to stop and make it right again. Or his actions will make him loose his honor in an instant.
Honor can be expensive to have. In a world where money is more important than honor, it’s challenging to interact with people without getting in trouble, honor wise.
The rewards for being honorable is mostly something that you know yourself, and maybe some people notice. The reward is how you feel about yourself, which interestingly makes for great internal peace where you really respect yourself. For some reason luck also seem to follow honor. 🙂
@Dennis, I don’t know you from a hole in the wall, or your motivations, but your action here certainly is giving people a chance to be more aware of what is really going on. Giving them a better chance to protect themselves. That sounds like a good start on making up for the damage. Keep it up!