What the Ashley Madison Hack Reveals About all Social Networks

When recently revealed that only 1,492 female users on Ashley Madison even checked their messages, it became clear that faking social activity is a phenomenon many people are susceptible to. Although despicable, the Ashley Madison site does teach us some lessons about social media participation. With Facebook, users are undoubtedly real for the most part though the company admits having found a multitude of fake profiles. The same cannot be said about every social network. Moreover, all social networks are greatly susceptible to a particular scam that goes something like this:

A user makes believe he or she has interest in your posts by following your blog, Google+ page, etc. Flattered, you either follow that user back or at least try to give that person a few +1s or "likes". After reciprocating, the user that followed you originally either unfollows you or mysteriously stops paying attention to your posts though you continue to see their posts. This scam is especially prevalent with attractive women that use the trick to create a large following. For all we know, these girls may not even be real.

Although Google does warn people about following strangers, it's human nature to be social. Fortunately, being somewhat antisocial, I don't have that problem much. Nonetheless, it is nice when someone actually reads my posts for a change.