Why you can't trust 'friends' on Facebook

Step 2: Go to Facebook and search for those six people. Let's say you find four of them also on Facebook. Request to be their friends on Facebook. All accept because you're already an established friend.

Step 3: Now compare the MySpace friends against the Facebook friends. Generate a list of people that are on MySpace but are not on Facebook. Grab the photos and profile data on those people from MySpace and use it to create false but convincing profiles on Facebook. Send "friend" requests to your victims on Facebook.

As a bonus, others who are friends of both your victims and your fake self will contact you to be friends and, of course, you'll accept. In fact, Facebook itself will suggest you as a friend to those people.

(Think about the trust factor here. For these secondary victims, they not only feel they know you, but actually request "friend" status. They sought you out.)

Step 4: Now, you're in business. You can ask things of these people that only friends dare ask.

"Let's meet for drinks -- bring your new car!"

"I'm in Nigeria on vacation, got robbed and need $500 to get home!"

"I see you'll be away for the holidays, but I want to send you a Christmas card anyway. What's your home address again?"

Facebook represents a perfect storm of fraud factors. The whole "friend" system creates trust, but the reality of social networks prevents verification that people are who they say they are.

How to meet new people and rob them blind
While some Facebook fraud involves strangers posing as existing "friends," other types involve making new "friends."

I'm being "scammed" right now by someone on Facebook (I won't give you names or other details because, truth be told, I'm only 95% sure it's a scam). Here's how it's going so far.

Some pretty young woman in Indonesia sent me a friend request two weeks ago. I've been researching Facebook scams for this article, so I assumed it was a setup, played along and added her as a friend. Checking her profile, I found exactly what I expected to find: All her friends were male and most closer to my age than hers; her profile was brand-new; photos showed her only with a bunch of other women. (After a fellow male dupe posted on her wall that it was strange she had only male friends, suddenly a couple of female friends emerged -- probably from other fraudulent profiles set up by the scammer.) Every few days, I get a wall post or a chat session.

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