Normally I am a Facebook enthusiast for using the social network in your online real estate marketing strategy. Lately, however, I’m starting to have some doubts.

This morning, as I was managing my client’s accounts, I had to log out of Facebook for just a moment and then log back in. That’s when I saw it; a mid-login notice to ‘Register your Computer’.  You can’t get past it (I tried). They might as well have put a notice that “resistance is futile”.

Nope, sorry, no way around it. You are not getting on to Facebook unless you ‘name’ your computer.

Is this Facebook’s sudden ‘answer’ to all the controversy over security issues and spotlight in the news as to their use of private information?  With so many people getting upset about privacy issues and talking about completely deleting their Facebook accounts, I can only image that this was somehow Facebook’s alternative to actually taking the time to educate users on managing their privacy settings and taking control of their accounts.

What is your take on all the Facebook controversy? Will you still use Facebook to market your real estate business?

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Back in February I sent an email alert out to all the members of my Facebook fan pages about a scam that was proliferating across Facebook. The scam was a sneaky one. It was a message that came through in your notifications (not in your email) that stated, “Attention, your Facebook account could be deactivated. Click here to save it.”

Well, when you clicked on that notification you were actually taken to a third party application called ‘Account Verification’ that carried the Facebook logo and asked for access to your account & all associated information that it required ‘to work’. It looked pretty official, but I assure you that it was not. It was a well thought out plan to gain access to as many accounts as possible in the shortest amount of time possible. Because, as soon as you clicked ‘allow access’ the application then had access to your account and sent ‘notifications’ to every single one of your friends letting them know that their accounts ‘might be deactivated’.

And the cycle went on and on. Whatever became of that particular application, I don’t know. But I can say with a pretty high degree of certainty that it will not be the last malicious application to plague Facebook users.

So, what I have done is put together a quick video to show you how to verify that an application is legitimately made by Facebook. This 2 minute video shows you how to quickly check an application before you click ‘Allow Access’ and could save you a lot of headaches in the future.

Please keep in mind that there are many legitimate applications that are not developed by Facebook. This video is only referring to malicious applications that claim to be developed by Facebook and ask you to verify your account, email, account information etc etc.

Be safe out there!!

-Cheryl

Cheryl Waller
Marketing Consultant SEO, SEM, SMM
www.CherylWaller.com

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