14 DAY TRIAL // Cloning Facebook profile is a practice used by cybercriminals to scam people for quite some time now. However, over the past week, reports have been coming in from South Africa about hundreds of Facebook profiles being cloned.
The cloned accounts are used by the crooks to befriend the victim’s friends and abuse their trust for all sorts of malicious purposes.
eNCA has published a report on the latest scams.
An expert has told eNCA that a few hundreds of cloned accounts are not much if we consider that South Africa has around 9.5 million Facebook accounts registered in the country.
However, it’s still concerning, Managing Director at STrategy Workx, Steven Ambrose has told the news organization.
Avast! reports that even the brother of an employee has had his Facebook profile cloned by the South African cybercriminals.
“Cloned accounts can be used to send spam messages, initiate scams, and possibly steal personal information that could be used for more serious identity theft. In the recent cases, there are reports that once the request has been accepted, the scammer starts soliciting money from ‘friends,’” Avast! experts note.