If you administer a Facebook page with a significant number of likes, you will unfortunately become the target of spammers that will target your page with all kinds of advertisements. Facebook does a fairly good job of detecting these ads and banning the fake accounts responsible, but some spam attacks can go on for several days before being stopped. One spam ad that we have been seeing a lot of recently looks like this: The scamsters can create fake Facebook accounts much quicker than you’re able to delete their ads, and most Facebook pages don’t have the resources to monitorContinue reading »

It’s popular to think that Facebook knows everything about you, but it’s actually far from the truth. As a foreigner living in Japan, the ads shown to be are usually quite irrelevant. For example, today I was targeted by an advertisement for English conversation lessons: I guess it is a step up from being targeted by ads for Chinese counterfeiters. The situation in the US is not necessarily any better. When I visited last month, I was targeted by all kinds of ads that probably would be better directed at women: In this case it’s presumably the advertiser, or whicheverContinue reading »

March 26, 2013 – Update: Today we could not get the thumbnails to show even after following the steps below. However, when we created a link using bit.ly, we were able to choose from 10 different thumbnails. After using the Facebook debugger, it may be worth trying a couple of different shorteners to see if that solves the problem. If you’re sharing a link on Facebook, normally you’ll be allowed to select which thumbnail to show along with a short description. However, sometimes Facebook will only allow you a limited selection of thumbnails to choose from. For example, today weContinue reading »

Just a copy of a status update from Yamotokan in Shimoda. In Japan many people are extremely concerned about their privacy, but I am not sure if the hotel made the right choice by having its employees look like criminals:

I decided to visit the Facebook page of Coach to see what kinds of ads that would generate for me on Facebook. As you may know, Facebook advertisers generally target the interests of Facebook users. That I have visited the Coach Facebook page indicates that I am interested in handbags (despite being male). Not surprisingly, after visiting the Coach page, I started seeing ads like these: For some reason these ads to not provide the landing page URL, but clicking on them takes you to louis-vuitton-shop.net. It follows the same pattern as the other scam stores I have featured inContinue reading »

It seems like every time I have finished writing a blog post, Facebook decides to show me some more scam ads: I clicked on the advertisement, expecting yet again to find another scam site. However, I ended up on this site: I thought to myself; What is going on? Have the Facebook scammers finally learned how to do web design? A quick search shows that the domain was registered on January 22, 2013: Then I take another look at the website, and realize that they are simply in the process of copying the website of Warby Parker. Google still hasContinue reading »

Today I noticed this Facebook advertisement for legalrayban.jp: For a change, the landing page today is actually the one indicated. Legalrayban.jp was registered for 1 year on January 20, 2013, by Lin WeiTian. The whois contact information lists a Japanese address and a Chinese phone number. As with all scam sites, the design is horrible and anyone should be able to see that the site is dubious at best: The contact information page gives [email protected] as the email address. A quick google search shows that this email is used on numerous other scam websites: I will report this one toContinue reading »

As usual, I am a good citizen and decided to report this scam at the Oakley Website. Yesterday I completed the horrible form to report a different website, but today I decided to send an email to the contact address listed instead: Of course, the email address does not work. So, yet again, I completed the form that asks for all kinds of irrelevant information. For example the “name of description of product” is a required field, but is obviously not relevant when reporting a counterfeit website. Not only that, but the comments section only allows for 150 characters! OakleyContinue reading »

Here are a couple of more scam ads that I discovered today: The first advertisement for sunglasselover.com is actually redirected to oakleyjpstore.com. It seems like sunglasselover.com is not even a registered domain, while oakleyjpstore.com is registered under Lin Lin in China on January 23, 2013. oakleyjpshop.com was registered by the same individual on January 14, 2013. It’s amazing that Facebook allows these kinds of advertisements. With some of the best brains in the industry, it should be easy for them to automatically check the domain registration dates of all websites that want to advertise on Facebook. Domains registered during theContinue reading »