Would You Friend This Fake Person? Probably

If someone you don’t know, represented only by a photo of a rubber duck, tries to friend you on Facebook, you’ll probably...accept. That’s the conclusion of a study by a security firm that created two fake accounts—the fictitious woman behind the duck was named Daisy Feletin—and sent out 100 random friend requests, with about a 50% success rate. And take a look at that name again, gullible ones: Does it not look suspiciously like an anagram of “false identity?”

The other fake account, Mashable notes, was for a “Dinette Stonily"—an anagram of “stolen identity”—whose profile picture was two cats lying on a rug. Combined, the two racked up 95 random friends. Dinette even got eight friend requests directed at her, unbidden. And we’re getting even less cautious: The so-called “rubber duck attack,” the company says, garnered an even higher acceptance rate than when the company performed the experiment two years ago.
(More Facebook stories.)