Internet users advised to investigate before adding friends online
Internet users have been advised to do a thorough investigation on the people they meet online before adding them as friends on social media.
The advice was given on Saturday by Rotimi Onadipe, the founder of Internet Safety Magazine, who shared his expert opinion with internet users at his organisation’s weekly lecture on online safety.
Onadipe said most internet users feel good every time they add new friends on social media, while they are unaware that there are many impostors on different social media platforms that have impersonated innocent individuals with the aim of using their identities for fraudulent and criminal activities.
Onadipe, an advocate of internet safety, said social media users must be very careful with the kind of people they add as friends on social media.
He said: “Don’t be in a rush to add anyone as your friend on social media no matter how good, interesting or attractive the person’s profile is. You must be informed that online criminals impersonate innocent people for various criminal purposes e.g. identity theft, cyber extortion, child sexual exploitation, drug trafficking, blackmail, online child pornography, email or password hacking, intellectual property theft, among others.
“Don’t be enticed by the attractive captions or beautiful profile pictures you see on social media because in most cases, criminals use such attractive images to convince unsuspecting victims to trust them.
“Before you add people as friends on social media, do a thorough investigation about their personal information so as to avoid being vulnerable to online abuse or cybercrimes,” he said.
Share your thoughts on the story Internet users advised to investigate before adding anyone as friend online with Nigerian Sketch in the comments section.
