Beware Online Observers: Social Spam Attacks!

Heads-up, network-savvy social Internets, you or someone you know could be next! It seems no one is truly safe from cyber-attacks and pervy porn pollution. Check it: Today, suddenly and without warning, my cousin was the unlucky victim of a growing form of pseudo-identity theft. Someone or something hacked into her personal hi5 profile and sent out a spam blast that littered the hi5 walls of all her contacts with sexually charged quick-hello messages. Here’s the faux compliment I was creatively conferred with:

Hi Juan, I was just looking through my friends, you are hot!!! I would love to hang otu sometime. You can check my real profiel here. www.tinyprofiles.info/sweetthing88

Now, I’m assuming whoever authored this completely unimaginative solicitation was aiming for digital vérité by including obviously-on-purpose typos, but to me, it made the whole thing more annoying. Clearly an impostor.

Not to mention that my cousin would never say something half as retarded as that. If she really wanted to lay it on me by telling me how hot she finds me, she would do so in a sophisticated, tongue-in-cheek kinda way. And I’m actually supposed to believe that she has another profile in some random-ass website--her real one, no less--and that she took the time to craft a fake, less exciting profile on hi5 to save face with all her friends? Give me a break!

Anyway, the situation was actually totes hilarious, as was the unending torrent of pings, e-mails, and puzzled private messages that rained on my cousin after the cyber-spam attack. She was mortified at first, but then simply let it go after sending an assertive e-mail to the hi5 webmasters expressing her outrage.

I know hi5 is the poor man’s Facebook, but none of us, no matter what social network we choose to partake in, should be subjected to this kind of outrageous digital distress. Today, it was my cousin on hi5. Tomorrow, who knows? Are any of us safe?