hack

There are 50 posts tagged hack (this is page 5 of 5).

Chart reveals unusual patterns in Romney’s Facebook popularity


I discovered a company called Inside Facebook which has been tracking the popularity of the Presidential candidates’ Facebook pages.

Take a look at the graph above. Obama’s growth has been extremely predictable and steady, while Romney’s has been all over the place. It shows extreme swings. Now, I don’t know if waves of actual Romney supporters are getting on board his train or if someone’s padding his numbers on his behalf but the stark difference in the two candidates’ patterns does raise questions.

Profile slamming

I was thinking that there isn’t much out there that describes what I believe Mitt Romney’s campaign (or one of its allies) is doing to surreptitiously set Facebook accounts to like the campaign’s page. Is it account hijacking? Hacking? Vandalism? What do you call it?

Then I recalled telephone slamming, the practice where unscrupulous telephone companies steals the customer of another telephone company by switching that customer’s long distance provider without their knowledge or consent. This happened to a company I once worked for and stunned me in its audacity.

I think that manipulating someone’s social media profile without their permission is similar in some ways to telephone slamming. Since no one else seems to have come up with a name for this practice, I will call it “profile slamming.”

Twitter Updates for 2012-08-26

  • Is the Mitt Romney campaign hacking Facebook accounts? http://t.co/p8ImCbO8 #
  • @declanm Is Mitt Romney hacking Facebook accounts? http://t.co/p8ImCbO8 #
  • Yup. RT @chrisod Apple is evil with a nicer UI. #
  • A lawsuit too far? RT @aspyker picked up nexus 7 16gb last night. so ready to be so done with the ipad and itunes and apple. #
  • The kids and I are learning how to check the water quality of Raleigh's streams. http://t.co/AtLzro8C #
  • @rd_morgan yes, but FB will record that click, whether I was tricked or not. FB never showed a like. That's why I suspect a hack. in reply to rd_morgan #
  • I was just listening to Neil Armstrong's voice at Durham's science museum minutes before I learned of his death. Godspeed, sir. #

Twitter Updates for 2012-08-26

  • Is the Mitt Romney campaign hacking Facebook accounts? http://t.co/p8ImCbO8 #
  • @declanm Is Mitt Romney hacking Facebook accounts? http://t.co/p8ImCbO8 #
  • Yup. RT @chrisod Apple is evil with a nicer UI. #
  • A lawsuit too far? RT @aspyker picked up nexus 7 16gb last night. so ready to be so done with the ipad and itunes and apple. #
  • The kids and I are learning how to check the water quality of Raleigh's streams. http://t.co/AtLzro8C #
  • @rd_morgan yes, but FB will record that click, whether I was tricked or not. FB never showed a like. That's why I suspect a hack. in reply to rd_morgan #
  • I was just listening to Neil Armstrong's voice at Durham's science museum minutes before I learned of his death. Godspeed, sir. #

More stories of Romney fudging social media

FastCompany recently warned against the temptation of buying fake Twitter followers, pointing to a service called StatusPeople which can ferret out fakes. Says the article:

Do a quick Google search for “Mitt Romney Twitter Followers” and you’ll find dozens of articles discussing how his follower numbers grew suspiciously. Security firm Barracuda Labs created an infographic based on its research breaking down Romney’s newfound Twitter fame, sharing that one in four of Romney’s new Twitter accounts had never sent a single tweet. No matter how the presidential candidate got these new followers, it doesn’t look good from the outside (although his Faker Score is currently sitting pretty at just 12% of 839,719 followers).

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Did Mitt Romney hack my Facebook account?

Romney Facebook likes (courtesy Centrist Word)

After a 20-year IT career spent keeping the digital bad guys out of the corporate networks I managed, I’ve developed a sharp sense of when something digital isn’t right. Readers of my blog have seen me put this ability to use against phone scam artists, hapless former Nigerian kings, phishers, and other digital vermin.

When I spot something unusual, I am driven to find out as much about it as I can. I enjoy the challenge of uncovering online crooks, exercising my online sleuthing skills to get answers. Something big and unusual caught my attention last week; something no one else seems yet to be talking about.

I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t care if I’m the only one to see that the emperor has no clothes. If I am truly convinced that everyone else is missing the truth, I must, must be bold enough to say so. I can’t ignore it. It’s just part of my personality.

With that in mind, let me state this clearly and concisely: Mitt Romney is manipulating his social media numbers. How do I know this? Because Romney’s campaign picked the wrong guy to manipulate.
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Centrist Word: Mitt Romney Campaign Busted Buying Hundreds of Thousands of Facebook LIKES and Twitter Followers

Romney Facebook likes (courtesy Centrist Word)


The Centrist Word blog has uncovered evidence of social media manipulation by the Mitt Romney campaign.

While the blog accuses the campaign of buying Facebook followers, the article doesn’t provide answers about how this manipulation is being done. It’s quite possible that Romney’s campaign or someone acting on its behalf has been exploiting a Facebook vulnerability to secretly register likes on the accounts of not just fake users but real users as well.

The same thing happened at the same time. As you can see in the chart above, Mitt had seen a steady rise in the number of Facebook likes, then, magically on August 1st a spike. At the same time, Romney set the lofty goal of reaching 3 million Facebook likes. Propaganda for the digital age – purchased popularity.

Again, all you need to do is google “buy facebook followers” and you will see dozens of companies ready to help. In most cases, these services are used by companies in order to give them an initial ‘boost’ when first setting up a Facebook fan page for their business.

via Mitt Romney Campaign Busted Buying Hundreds of Thousands of Facebook LIKES and Twitter Followers |.

More Mitt Romney Facebook hijacks

A few other Facebook users are reporting that their accounts were used to like Mitt Romney’s page without their permission.

One person replied to my post to the Facebook help forum with this comment:

“The same thing happened to me and a few other people I know.”

Then there is this comment:
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Email to Facebook

I posted this in Facebook’s Help forum tonight. I don’t know if it will do any good but I thought I’d use Facebook’s meager feedback channels to at least attempt to alert them to this.

It seems that sometime today I unknowingly became a “fan” of the Mitt Romney page. I never clicked like on Romney’s page, nor does my Facebook activity log show any likes for Romney’s page for at least as far back as October 14, 2011.

I strongly suspect that someone has manipulated Facebook’s database to set this like status without Facebook properly logging it as it would’ve with any other likes I have chosen. Please research this and tell me when I became a fan of Mitt Romney’s page and, if you CAN’T tell me when I became a fan, please explain WHY you can’t tell.

I suspect a hack or virus is to blame. Or a breach of Facebook security.

Thanks much!

Mark Turner
Sysadmin and network security geek
Raleigh

Facebook virus forces me to “like” Mitt Romney

An unlike but no like? Something’s going on here!

Update 10 Oct 2012: Hello Mother Jones readers. Check here for my response to Erika Eichelberger’s story.

I checked Facebook this evening to find status updates from Mitt Romney’s campaign in my Facebook news feed. Thinking this was one of those stupid “promoted” updates that you see on Twitter, I gave it no mind. That is, until I found yet another update from the Romney campaign in my news feed. It was then that I surfed over to the Mitt Romney Facebook page and discovered to my shock that I was listed as “liking” that page.

Umm, no. Obama has raised my ire more than once, of course, but there is no way I’m voting for that clueless millionaire buffoon I call “Rmoney.” How Facebook came to think I would like the Romney page is quite the mystery.

A fellow geek suggested (I assume half-jokingly) that a Romney virus might be responsible for the status change. While I laughed at the suggestion, now I’m wondering if there might be truth to it. I have seen updates saying some friend of mine liked Mitt Romney, only to be surprised that person would do so knowing what I know of them. Not everyone wears their politics on their sleeve the way I do, but when you see multiple instances of this kid of thing you do begin to wonder if these choices aren’t being made without the knowledge of the account holders.
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