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Click on the image to read the story at MyTwinTiers.

Let's talk about clones. Really. Facebook clones.

Facebook clone accounts are NOT a hack or an exploit. It isn't a security risk. They haven't hacked your account. It doesn't take great skill to copy and paste information from a Facebook account. Clone accounts are a simple scam that uses trust to fool people rather than technical expertise.

Here's what to do if your account has been cloned:

Search for your name. If you come up with your name, personal information, picture(s) that it isn't you, report it. Here's how to report it:

• Click the “…” icon in the upper right of the cloned profile page
  
• Select “Find Support or report this profile”
• Follow the instructions from there. Facebook generally responds to these requests within 24-hours.

You can also let your friends know that they shouldn't accept requests from the other account.

Here are some tips if you want to avoid being cloned:

Hide your Facebook Friend list. That's where the scammers get their information. They use your public information to get everything. Your friends are their targets. If your friends are private, they've got nothing to use. It's much harder for them to scam people they can't see.

• Click on the upside down triangle at the far end of the blue top bar. Select Settings.
  
• In the left hand menu, select Privacy
• In the right hand box next to "Who can see your Friends List" and select Edit.
• Select the privacy settings. (I have mine set to "Only Me" because I'm paranoid and grumpy.)

Keep personal posts visible to friends only. The only pictures that have to be public are your avatar photo and your cover pic. They can both be hidden from your timeline.

It's always good to check your privacy settings anyway. Make personal photos, contact information available to friends only. I know that a lot of people have their information available because it's connected with their business, but it's easy to make a separate page for a business.

Helpful tip for internet safety!

If you get an email or message that asks you to click on a link to log on to an account (anywhere):
Don't click on the link inside the email or message. Go to the website by clicking directly on a bookmarked link (if you have one) or typing in the original site address into your address bar as shown below and log in.

Going to the website from a bookmark or typing the web address into your URL bar is your best bet. If there is a message for you, it will more than likely be waiting for you at the web site. If not, go through the original web site to find customer service and ask about the email or message.

This is not a foolproof method: You can also click on the email's header to get the information you need to determine if it is from a false sender. I've provided two examples below - One real (Microsoft) and one false (eHarmony). The eHarmony is an egregious example of a fake email.

But, that is not a foolproof method. You can't always tell who sent the email if it has been anonymized, so be careful if you chose to use it.

Ars Technica has a great article on parsing down email headers. It's a ton of information. Normally we leave it to our email servers to do the heavy lifting when it comes to spam and malicious emails. They can parse and sort better and faster than we can. Check out the article on Ars Technica if you are interested in how email sorting works. It's good and it has changed a lot since the early days of the internet.