Across the web from Free Live Video Chat Rooms to Youtube, Messenger Chat Services to FaceBook & Twitter you have to ask a very serious question......Can you tell if it's a face or a Fake? This report reveals some of the tactical dangerous and downright sinister elements of faking it.



Increasingly marketing firms are using popular social networks on the Web as part of their campaigns - creating fake user profiles to sell their products. On one hand this is not a good thing for social networks, because the last thing they want is to be clogged up with marketing campaigns masquerading as users in their systems. But the reality is that marketing campaigns are becoming a popular aspect of social networks now - and in virtual worlds such as Sims - and so they help drive page views and therefore advertising for those social networks.

How much does a friend cost? Ok, how much does it cost to have hot and sexy friends. Lots of them! Wll like everything else in cyberspace, you can now!

FakeYourSpace is a new service for your social networking sites such as FaceBook & MySpace Fo the princely sum of just USD0.99 per month you can buy yourself a hot looking friend to add to your Social Networking page. Your fake hot friend will send a comment to you twice weekly in order to make page and (erm,..Thats YOU!) look 'popular'. His might sound like fun but theres a dangerous and even capitalist side to this too. According to a recent BBC report Italian drinks manufacturer Campari ran a campaign across multiple media, one of which was to create fake profiles on several SNS's. The fake "Profiled Member" invited other site users to visit the official website of the campaign; HOTEL CAMPARI.

The Hotel Campari website got 170,000 views. For the social network sites, they got more than 3,000 "friends" and 2,500 comments across the sites. The number of views across the social network sites is currently around 92,000 and this led to over 13% of all Hoel Campari visits originating from the Social Networking scene. The danger for the SNS's here is that people are uncomfortable with fake profiles. When they join a social network they want to network with real people. Should this practice continue and flourish then soon social networking sites will be clogged up with marketing campaigns. One things for sure, so long as its working for the marketers, we will see more of this happening as more marketing firms seek viral ways to launch campaigns through these sites.

In another report credited to The Guardian newspaper we have learned that a British businessman has been awarded £17,000 in damages against a former friend accused of putting a fake profile of him on Facebook.

The high court heard that the profile falsely suggested that the businessman was looking for same-sex relationships and was a subscribed to several UK based Gay societies. Deputy judge Richard Parkes QC awarded the victim£15,000 for libel and £2,000 for breach of privacy.

Even more sinister however is the case of the Brazillian Worm Virus that used a fake profile on Twitter to poison its prey. According to the BBC, the fake profile works by trying to convince users to download the fake Flash video viewer to play an associated adult video. It downloads and installs a program capable of stealing data. The attack is believed to be the first to target Twitter

Even more recently details have emerged about two worms that targetting MySpace and Facebook. More variants of these worms are also starting to turn up.

The worms transformed victims' machines into zombie computers, used by criminals to send spam, launch phishing attacks and harvest data.

They were disguised as a link to YouTube which also installed a fake version of Flash Player.

"Unfortunately users are very trusting of messages left by friends on social networking sites so the likelihood of a user clicking on a link like this is very high," said Alexander Gostev, a senior virus analyst at Kaspersky Lab.

Microsoft Windows users are vulnerable to infection from these malicious programs.

Next time you visit one of your favorite Free Chat Rooms or create a profile on a Social Networking Site it may seem like a bit of harmless fun, presenting oneself as a prettier, taller slimmer, younger, older or just more popular version of the real thing. But remember, be careful, there is a serious side to this aswell!