Some people have performed tricks to earn money from Facebook, including impersonation.

Since Facebook allows members to develop quizzes themselves, many users have been attracted by fortune-telling quizzes.

“Within an evening, I join tens of fortune-telling quizzes. They are very interesting,” said Phuong, from HCM City.

However, this is the way to collect personal email address of players.

A short time after playing the quizzes, Phuong received a lot of invitation letters to join such groups named “Sharing a river”, “Topica.edu.vn”, “Grateful”, etc. All invitation letters were sent from the same email address.

Website is advertised as the place where one can buy fans for their Facebook pages. Visiting this site, one will see the names of “typical clients” of this , like Language Link, ACET (reputed English language training centers in Vietnam), Miss Vietnam Mai Phuong Thuy, etc. and instruction to download and fill up ready-made contracts from the site.

According to Tuoi Tre Daily, the website is owned by a joint stock company, which advertised to help attract visitors to clients’ facebook pages at the price of VND1,000/member. After signing a contract, clients have to send 50 percent of the contract value to the firm’s banking account. Half of the pay will be transferred when the contract ends. However, the list of partners, their contacts, and contract forms on the website have been removed.

This service is offered based on the need of some people who want to buy fans to support their entries on Facebook. However, some have signed contracts and paid the service provider but they didn’t have fans yet.

According to Nguyen Viet Dung, a lecturer from the BMG International Management Institute, some individuals and organizers took advantage of Facebook to earn money. They created hundreds of accounts and used auto add friends tool to seek at least 5,000 friends. They then invited them to mark “like” to a website. When these sites have enough members, they would sell them to partners.

When Facebook detected this form of trick, and closed any account which used “tricks” to attract fans, these people have changed their trick. They create Facebook accounts in the name of famous people in Vietnam, like singer Ho Ngoc Ha, Miss Vietnam Mai Phuong Thuy, etc. to attract fans.

They also create events and invited people to join by clicking “like” on Facebook. Hoang Nam, a Vietnamese student in Japan, said: “Recently I saw a campaign to vote for Ha Long Bay as the new natural wonder of the world on the Internet. I immediately joined by clicking “like” for that page but after that I found out that the page had no connection for Ha Long Bay. It was a Facebook page advertising for Vietnam Travel”.

Miss Vietnam 2006, Mai Phuong Thuy confirmed that she has only one Facebook account, which is linked with her friends, not fans.

While regulations on social network management and on solving disputes in the online world are not completed, Internet users should be careful when they participate in any online activities to protect themselves, experts advised.

PV