After spending a lot of time falling asleep at the library while facing the philosophy books, I determined that the concept of destiny is a construct that allows man a gentle release from facing the terror of his existence, and that… (more)
From this quarter’s 2600 magazine, an article excerpt from “Create Mass Hysteria on a College Campus Using Facebook” by alleyrat.
The two most crucial aspects of a fake profile are that it must be a woman (women won’t friend unknown males, but males will friend unknown women) and that it must have an inviting innocent picture. Generic photos were obtained that were not direct face shots, but rather had some distance to them. It’s easy to find stuff that fits the overall campus climate and apply them. Each account was also given some fake interests, political orientations, etc. and the wall and chat featured on Facebook were disabled.
Once a bunch of profiles were made, I imported a randomized .csv list of .edu emails into each. Facebook matched profiles for roughly 300 of the emails imported, and friend requests were blasted out en masse for each profile. Within 24 hours each account had 150-200 friends. UCSD is a relatively prestigious school, and I am baffled by how successful this technique was and how little people know about the workings of the internet and, in particular, spam (Internet license anyone?). Many people would send me a private message with “Do I know you?” I just ignored all of them.
- alleyrat, 2600 Magazine, Volume Twenty-Seven, Number Two, Page 18
Emphasis added.
“…I have no idea how to answer these questions.” Like, one question asked if I had access to a gun and so I wrote “Depends. What do you need it for?” – the bloggess
