#2013canada Facebookgate

An important resource for university students across Canada is being hijacked.

Specifically, the Class of 2013 groups for dozens of Canadian Universities are being run by anonymous fake facebook accounts, and are likely dummy accounts for marketers.

As @bradjward discovered last year, and wrote about on squaredpeg.com, the class of 2013 has become a prime target for social media marketers. This is fully organized here in Canada.

These marketers have created a group called Grads of 2009 (Canada). This is basically a massive data collection tool: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=147777570312

From there, they push links to class of 2013 groups run by their affiliated dummy accounts.

I have been in a battle with some of these accounts for over a month now (as is evidenced by their annoyance at me evident in the fake Brock 2013 group).

I dealt with spam on our group posted nearly every ½ hour by dummy accounts hoping to mislead Brock students to join their group. I reported them, and their group to facebook who eventually acted. Unfortunately, it’s a bit like wack-a-mole. One dummy account goes down, another pops up.

They are back, and once again trying to mislead Brock students.

Another big battle going on right now seems to be at McGill. There are two massive groups, one of which claiming the other is fake, and using squaredpeg.com as evidence, but is actually the fake one! Does that make sense?

I don’t have any idea what their motives are.

All I can suggest for now is that the social media people in higher ed in Canada need to pay attention to this.

For more info, check out Brad's post here: http://squaredpeg.com/index.php/2008/12/18/facebook-pay-attention/

check out #2013canada for updates