I'm increasingly being asked by folks on Facebook if it's possible to tell who has been viewing their Facebook profile. A number have been attracted to webpages and Facebook applications that claim to be able to give you a secret insight into who is spying on your profile.
Well, if you're one of those people who are curious about who might be watching you online, take care.
Right now we're seeing a significant number of Facebook users posting messages such as:
OMG OMG OMG... I can't believe this actually works! Now you really can see who views your profile!!! WOAH
and
See who views your Facebook profile in real-time!!!
However, like the "Justin Bieber cell phone number" scam and the "This mother went to jail for taking this pic of her son!" scam, the links pointed to in your friends' status updates are not to be trusted.
If you make the mistake of clicking on the link to one of these pages offering to tell you who is viewing your Facebook profile, you will find that the people behind the "services" want you to do a few things first.
For instance, they'll ask you to "Like" their pages (which means you are spreading the link to friends in your social network), and they will ask you to advertise their site by posting an "OMG" message (with a link) to at least five different places on Facebook.
After all that hard work you would hope that they would give you access to the powerful Profile Spy app wouldn't you? But I'm afraid your luck is out.
They'll next ask you to hand over your personal information by taking numerous surveys - before ultimately trying to trick you into handing over your cellphone number which they'll sign up to an expensive premium rate service.
Remember, this scam doesn't work as the result of clickjacking, or a vulnerability on Facebook. The scammers are achieving their ends because of human gullibility - pure and simple. If people considered what they were doing and thought twice about the possible consequences then we would see nothing like as many of these attacks occurring, and our news feeds on Facebook would see less spam.
Do your bit for the public good and share this page on Facebook to warn your online friends about scams like this. Press the button at the side to share this article if you're a Facebook user.
Interestingly, the pages that this particular scam points you to aren't on Facebook, but still display a fake Facebook header at the top. You will notice if you visit them that although the top menu options are there, they cannot be clicked on - which clearly makes the pages look even more suspect.
Ultimately you have to have your wits about you to avoid scams like this. If you or your friends keep falling for these sort of confidence tricks, or want to learn more about security threats, don't forget you can join the Sophos page on Facebook.
You could also do a lot worse than check out our best practices for better privacy and security on Facebook guide.
Follow @gcluley
It's baaaaack. Under a different name of course. It got deleted last time I posted a warning on my IT security page, maybe they'll pay more mind if you post it.
http://www.umimtelling.com/stalker/app.php
i'm getting texts from someone on this site and i need them to stop. They are coming to my cell phone, has anyone else getting them? please contact whoever and tell them they must stop. thank you.
days before i too clicked on such application,i know they all were fake,but with curiosity i clicked on it after that the application started post that "OMG" message on all my friends walls....lots of my friends clicked on them too,but then i realized and asked them not to click such links in future......for orkut we can use some php scripts to hack but facebook is different
so in other words .. no you CANT find out who views your page `???
From Facebook's own FAQ:
"Facebook does not provide a functionality that enables you to track who is viewing your profile, or parts of your profile, such as your photos. Third party applications also cannot provide this functionality. Applications that claim to give you this ability will be removed from Facebook for violating policy. "
http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=806#!/help/?fa...
Why should I care anyway? The only thing that anyone other than my friends can see about me are my picture and a few totally innoucous things.
i thought that was what this app was for i want to see who is looking at my profile
But why? "Your" account on FB is not yours anyway. Nothing connected to the internet is private. That's rule #1. Material shared in public, is considered public. As a private person you have no right to monitor a public place. If you consider information private, keep it out of public. It's that simple.
That's right, you can't find out. Trust
me I have tried.
wat abt your first status on facebook?
The "first status" messages are also survey scams.
See our articles at http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/01/12/first-... and http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/01/06/my-1st...
That is 100% Fake too, and a scam.
but facebook can find out who viewed, and under court order others could too
if its not possible to know who views your profile, then why earlier today was i looking at someones pictures who i dont have as a friend, and now just a few hours later they are randomly and quite coincidentally set to private profile(meaning i must be friends with them)
@funfun that's great question becuz the same situation happened with me. Something is happening either knowingly or unknowingly with FB that links viewed profiles as FB friends. My situation happened after a guest used my computer to log on her FB account. Some of her contacts were later added to my list. Another time someone was added to my list from a news feed from which I left a comment. I have checked my settings. Are there others this has happened to?
see this on a mates facebook and thought i wouldn't mine knowing who's been looking at my profile but before i did that i google it first and found this, well i'm glad i did so post a comment on it on my frends facebook where the link was putting a warning to stop others, but as i did it all just vanished. well i think that just speaks for its self.
I am very intrigued to know if ppl are viewing me... Sad i know!! But will there ever be anything in the future for such a thing? Bebo has it... Why not FB??
Because its a violation of privacy, the fact Bebo has it, is one reason why Bebo is dieing.
If you are 'friends' with someone on FB why should it matter if they look at your profile?
Not to mention that if people who aren't your friends on FB can see your profile you need to secure it with your privacy settings.
If you post anything online its a good idea to assume anyone can see it, the internet is public, even with security/passwords etc nothing is ever 100% safe.
I do think FB should make more of an effort to keep these apps out of FB as they are a scams anyway. I would have thought they could have some scripts running to stop posts like 'See who has viewed your profile'.
how to set privacy so people who is not on my friends list can't see my profile? please help and thanks.
How about Twitter? Can I see who has visited my twitter page?
Nope. Not unless you've marked your Twitter page as "private", in which case you control who has access to it.
But even then you can't tell which of your approved Twitter followers is actually reading your tweets.
OK Thanks :)
its a facebook, who cares whos on your profile if its such a promble LEAVE FACEBOOK
can some1 please tell me that how to hack a facebook account ?????
I refer the right honourable gentleman to the answer I give here:
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/02/07/hack-t...
I have just clicked on a link on facebook, which told me I could view who has viewed my profile, I stupidly (yes I know) down loaded something on my computer. It then started to scan my computer but I cancelled it half way through. Is there any way I can see what has been downloaded and remove it????
Glad I found this. I've had a few "OMG" messages like those described above and thought I'd check it out first. Graham, fyi, you're no. 3 in google.co.uk for "facebook - how to find out who has viewed your profile". BTW, I actually think it's a bit odd for people to think it's a bit odd (!?) for their ex's or anybody else to view their profiles. It's perfectly natural isn't it? What might be odder is to become obsessed about who is viewing your profile. Who would actually be more likely to develop stalker tendencies here? Thanks for the clarification.
Facebook would loose alot of their members if people were able to detect who was viewing their page. I mean lets be real, we all do it, wheather its an ex bf /gf, ex friend, enemy, or even a crush.. NO1 wants to be seen as a stalker so that would make folks less intrested in using FB because "We dont want to be viewed as a stalker or an obsessed manic freak"... we as Americans have wayyy to much pride I admit that lol. FB would die quickly! I think thats why they are going so hard to put a hault to all these ways to find out whose "stalking you". Give me a break, guess that makes me a stalker.. Cause girlllll I be on everybody page LOL
xoxoxo
Im English. But good comment!:).
I looked up an old friend once on fb, i just checked out his profile one time didnt message comment nothing. We had no mutual friends no friends of friends nothing on fb. Then a couple weeks later he showed up on the top of my "people you may know" list and was there for several days. This never happened before and has not happened since and ive done such a thing many times and visited others sites several times. Funny thing is it happened to be a friend i had a falling out with and it sorta gave me an excuse to contact him again, it was a perfect "ice breaker" we reconnected and are closer than ever before.
Hi,
I wana know how can i then know who viewed my facebook profile without falling in the trap of these probs.
Why does anyone need or want to know who has viewed their profile? It's a social networking site - of course people view your profile. If it's friend then why wouldn't they, and if it's a stranger and you don't want them to just change your privacy settings.
If you're suspicious of such activity, then why do people have thousands of contacts?? And if you are one to have that many contacts, I would definatly consider you to be The Stalker.. And if you do have that many actual friends, I would love to attend your party!!
so true. I laugh at the ppl that have hundreds of "friends" on fb. Its crazy!!!Now days, your lucky if you have one TRUE FRIEND. They are hard to come by....
We've just seen this virus now, but what does it do?
I was first tagged in my friends post. I just pressed the notification to understand what it is and then I got this statistic report of 'how many times I visited her page'.
I've traced this on my wall later and marked it as spam, then it was gone. removing it the 'normal' way didn't work.
Other than this, does this Virus do anything more?
Tnx
"Why does anyone need or want to know who has viewed their profile?" because you want to be aware of the girls that have crushes on you but stay quiet. duh lol
thank you your comment is a no brainer for all the idiots who post their lame ass comments. I'm with u of course i want to know never no when a booty call can come out of it
I recently had someone who is on my Friends List on FB tag me as one of her Top 10 stalkers. Embarrassing! I have visited this persons page but not all that frequently and not much more than any others I visit. If it is not possible to track visits on FB how or where would this information come from?
It's against the Facebook terms and conditions for any Facebook App to tell you who's been looking at your profile - the sooner people learn this the better!
Since Facebook don't want developers making applications that tell people how many profile views they've had, I would doubt the tools required to do it are in the Facebook API! So an App that promises to show whose been viewing your profile, will for the foreseeable future always be fake!
geez all this for wat? haha noothing!!!
Im glad that it's fake because I like to stock my ex-girlfriend
i was just had by this and it has sent it to all my contacts...any way to reverse this? doh
It's not JUST human gullibility at fault here. They exploit something more insiduous that that even. The premium rate cell phone services. I got done by one these once and it was simply because I had no idea (call that gullible maybe) that by giving someone the rigth to send you text messages that you could also be giving them the right to bill you for it. This was nowhere stated or written in the service that got me. No problem I unsubscribed, and in the interim have lobbied my telephone provider to provide me with a premium SMS prohibition on my phone. I don't want any premium SMS sevrice ever, stop so just don't let my phone receive them. That has notw been achieved and is possible but it still predicates an understanding that by giving someon your cell number, they can send you a message that costs you money. In Australia, where I'm writinbg from, such an idea is simply not widely held or understood and hence the problem is as much a pathetic product offering by telecom providers that does not correlate with teh markets perceptions or needs. There are trivial technical fixes for this that telecoms can implement.
For example before charging me for a messge form any new number, send me a free message telling me what's going on (much like reverse charged calls used to operate), "Service X or number X is trying to send you a premium text message. You will be billed $2 to receive this message. Would you like to receive it?" And if I sanser Yes, then ask if it should remember permissio form this service. Etc.
Trivial customer service. Suych scams work not just human gullibility, but on pathetic service provision loopholes.
Hi,
I wana know how can i then know who viewed my facebook profile without falling in the trap of these probs
You can't. Facebook doesn't provide a way for you to determine who has viewed your profile.
So my friends facebook is private and somehow someone is able to go on it and give information to others about her. Is there a way of knowing who is doing this?
God only knows how many friends I have warned about this scam. Yet, it still shows up in my news feed.
i love facebook it like have a phone ur always on it
I would love 2 know who looks at my fb....I don't consider this stalking but curiousity!
anybody stupid enough to click this deserves it
I've been told by a few of my fb friends to I could check who has been looking at my profile. But now your telling me NO I CAN'T. My question to you is why the xxxx not. With the crazy ppl out there. I'm only on Facebook because I have grandkids and framily all over this planet. I just think there needs to be away for some1 to check and see who is looking at there profile! ! ! ! ! ! ! !