UPDATE JANUARY 14th

The original group shown below has been turned into an IRON MAIDEN fan club!! The creators changed admin names, renamed the group and the details. Here is what the original link was:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=245455652325

We did some searching, and the Know Who is Viewing Your Profile 24/7 group name is being used to start a few more groups:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=284580189114
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=268710359318

UPDATE JANUARY 15th

The Iron Maiden group above has now been terminated by Facebook. However, there are still the replacements shown above. Read the original post below to be informed!

ORIGINAL POST DETAILS

Profile Watcher Scam

Once again we have another Profile Watcher/Profile Spy group, called Know Who is Viewing Your Profile 24/7, attracting way too many members. I received numerous invites to join this one over the weekend, as well as postings to my wall about others who had joined.

The group once again claims that after inviting all your friends, and having at least 50% accept, you will be provided with a link to the application. This simply is not true.

Firstly, tracking someone’s surfing habits on Facebook is against their terms and conditions, and is stated as such in their developers manual. No application or game is allowed to insert any such coding that pulls any sort of information beyond profile content that could be required for the app/game.

Secondly, if it is a valid application, why the need to require a 50% acceptance of a group invitation? A valid application will be set up as an application – not as a group or fan page.

Thirdly, it is impossible for any group, application or fan page to know how many people accepted an invite. Again, this is against Facebook Terms of Service.

As for this particular group, you can see from their instructions below that they require the usual “invite all your friends”. This should be a warning to any people joining any group. Most groups, including our own, ask that members share the group info with their Facebook friends, but no valid group should detail a specific number required, or a specific acceptance rate.

Profile Watcher Scam Instructions

Profile Watcher Admins

Another warning to note is the 4 admins listed. The creator, if his picture is even him, looks to be a teenager. The remaining 3 admins have no picture. All four have absolutely zero profile information available, meaning they have no friends; are members of no pages; and do not accept any friend requests. This leads me to believe the accounts have all been created specifically to create this group.

Already over 250,000 people have joined this group and with the rate I was seeing it fly over walls yesterday, I expect it won’t be long before hundreds of thousands more are potentially scammed.

Help stop the spread of these groups. Be diligent about what you invite your friends to join. If you want to join and peek around – that is your prerogative, but be wary of what you pass onto others

Profile Spy Scam

There is another scam floating around Facebook the past few days, offering to send you a notification every time someone views your profile. The group is called Profile Spy, and amazingly, it has built up almost half a million members in just a few days – 350,000 in the last 48 hours alone.

We strongly advise you NOT to join this group, let alone invite any of your friends to join either. The group has been set up by a child, about 16 years old (based on his profile stats), bragging that he wants 412,000 members by January 12th, “cuz dats my birthday”. His language alone should be a red flag that this is a farce.

Farce or not, what’s worrying about this is the “activation link” that you will supposedly receive once he reaches his goal. Since Profile Spy has been set up as a group, and not an application, this kid has the ability to email everyone who has joined, and include whatever malicious content he wishes in that email.

If you receive an email to your Facebook Inbox from Profile Spy, we strongly recommend you do NOT click it.

Here is the group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=209645259791
and now a second has appeared at:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=225669324889

Here is some further proof this program is bogus:

1. The photo he uses as his spy proof above has been clearly forged. If you look closely, you will see cut and paste lines where he has supposedly had people view his profile.

2. The kid graduates high school in 2012. This makes him about 15-16, and very unlikely the developer of this sort of application.

3. It is not even set up as an application! If it truly integrated with Facebook, it would be useless to set it up as a group. It would need to be an application for it to be fully functional.

4. There is too much controversy right now about tracking profile views. Many users feel it is an invasion of privacy, as as such, reputable developers have left this mammoth idea alone.

Here is his instructions about what you must do to join:

Profile Spy Scam Instructions

Thanks to those who brought this group to our attention, and hopefully we helped a few of you make a more educated decision about joining.

UPDATED: JANUARY 1, 2010

As you will read below, we received a few comments from the creator of this group. He demanded we remove his picture; stating we did not have permission to use his name and photo, and that we didn’t have his parents permission.

Firstly, HE CHOSE to create the group with his name and photo, on a social group, making it public property. He also created that group under the assumption it was with parental knowledge and consent. I am sure Facebook will see it the same way.

He also claims to have created the group for fun because he was “bored”, and that I should have noticed that there was an update to the group once the goal of 412,000 members was met. He says no links will be sent.

However, here is the update he posted at 2pm EST, after we made our post yesterday:

Profile Spy Scam Update

As you can see from his own update, he STILL claims “the link WILL 100% be POSTED for EVERYONE” – the complete opposite of what he claims in his comments made below.

The new goal of the group is 2,121,121 – 250,000 have joined since we posted 24 hours ago.

The group has now turned into a spam site. He is posting links to videos and products for sale – to serve his own purpose. I find it extremely ironic that he is claiming we cannot legally post his name and picture without his parents consent because he is underage, yet the link he posts for an ebook available at Clickbank.com, requires you to be at least 18 years of age to sell Hmmmm…..

This kid needs to realize you can’t have it both ways…But with 2 million people joining, there will definitely be a few to fall for his childish antics….

UPDATED: JANUARY 3, 2010

The teenage creator of the Profile Spy group is at it again! Yesterday he actually had the nerve to post that he was thinking of deleting the group, because so many of us were “too immature to understand” that it had been created only for fun. He also went on to explain that there was no Profile Spy link and that there never was one coming. Unfortunately, before I could get a screenshot of that comment, he deleted all posts in the group, and changed his name. I assumed this was going to be the end of the group…. I was wrong.

The kid changed his actual name on Facebook, to Ramdon Person – unbelievable. I assume “ramdon” was used in place of “random”. The word ‘random’ most likely was caught in Facebooks name filters….lol

Starting 8 hours ago, he began reposting details on how to join, invite everyone, and the latest group member goal. Oh yes, and he also re-posted the link to some rap video – most likely a friend. Ironically, or not, that friend ALSO has a Profile Spy group located at:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=225669324889

Here are the latest post screenshots (to preserve in case he changes again!)

Profile Spy NEW Instructions - Jan 3

Profile Spy Update - Jan 3

What amazes me, is that not only have over 1.1 million people joined this group, but the fact Facebook has not yet shut it down, despite numerous scam reportings to them about it…

UPDATED: JANUARY 3, 2010 #2

The original group discussed above, along with the creator, has now been banned from Facebook

However, his friends’ group still remains:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=225669324889 – now banned

And, another deceptive one called Profile Watcher, is gathering steam with over 600,000 members…
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=219042609825