Thought anyone who has been the recipient of a fake friend request would enjoy this article about how "dozens of prominent security analysts [were persuaded] to connect on their social networking Web pages with people who weren't friends at all. They were fake profiles, purportedly of other well-known security pros." The scam – demonstrated at the Black Hat hacking conference in Vegas earlier this month – was designed to "expose the trust that even some of the most skeptical Internet users display on some of the most insecure sites on the Web." Fake friends can post programming code on your profile's pages, or recommend malicious Websites for you to click on.

Meanwhile, Michael Phelps said he has 7,600 new friend requests on Facebook. Wonder if they're all legit? (Not suprisingly, his fan page has more than 1 million fans.)

Tell us: Do you reflexively accept all friend requests, or do you check out each one?

Tx,
Maureen

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Maureen Kochan
ConnectSafely forum manager