<p>I heard about this link from a friend on an email list. </p>
<p>Theres</a> something going down on Facebook. Pay attention. | SquaredPeg </p>
<p>This is important, because it appears that a commercial company is attempting to scam college students for its own data-mining purposes.</p>
<p>Interesting.</p>
<p>Thanks tokenadult. This is important. Passing it on to my D who is so excited to be in the Facebook group for her ED school - looks like it is one of the scam groups.</p>
<p>Thanks for spreading the word. :) We will be doing some things differently at Butler, that's for sure.</p>
<p>Brad, E-Comm Coordinator at Butler University
[url=<a href="http://www.squaredpeg.com%5DSquaredPeg.com%5B/url">http://www.squaredpeg.com]SquaredPeg.com[/url</a>]</p>
<p>More on this developing story on the Chronicle of Higher Ed website:</p>
<p>Wired</a> Campus: Did Company Use Fake Facebook Groups to Market to*Students? - Chronicle.com</p>
<p>There should be a story on Inside</a> Higher Ed in the near future.</p>
<p>Really interesting. I never did like any of those C. Prow. guides, not sure why.</p>
<p>Great detective work on their part!</p>
<p>Unfortunately for the scammers, many of the kids who are college-bound are smart enough to have picked this up. I know I'm in the Amherst 2013 group, where we immediately agreed to abandon the fake one and create a legitimate group of our own. Hopefully other schools and students can buck the fake groups as well.</p>
<p>The organizers of the groups made a couple mistakes which give them away fairly easily on Facebook to anyone who pokes around for a couple minutes. Firstly, they created the groups way too far in advance. I found myself wondering why the Swarthmore Class of 2013 or Vanderbilt Class of 2013 groups already had anywhere from 30 to 50 members when it was only halfway through September. This, of course, immediately sparks the curiosity of prospective students - who already knows they're admitted?! Let's investigate and see who they are! It was easy to check and see that these people were members of tons of college groups and were already enrolled in totally different colleges themselves. Even if you don't have access to their profile, under their name it might read "University of Miami 2011." The people who set this up should have taken more care that they're dealing with a generation of fairly tech-savvy kids. I'm not that snoopy and I noticed this fact sometime back in September or October that all the Class of 2013 groups had the same creators....It might go unnoticed in some of the bigger university groups with thousands of members, but definitely not the liberal arts colleges....</p>
<p>Are these Facebook groups for the just-admitted kids? Or do they apply to older kids as well? I don't have a HS senior but I want to know if I should worry. (About this, in addition to everything else I worry about.)</p>
<p>A few years ago, the UVa group had applicants in it during the winter. They posted their decisions on the wall and some left the group at that point. </p>
<p>I think the groups are whatever the students decide to make them. </p>
<p>UVa already has a page, so students can become "fans" of us and I added a group myself the other day, in case the groups started by the College Pro.wler/MatchU people were deleted. Last time I looked at it, there were about 6 students in there and we don't have ED/EA, so they are just interested students. That's fine with me...I'm not going to monitor the group too closely and hope to add a few current UVa students to the admin list, so the group can evolve without me.</p>
<p>With a little searching, you should be able to find which groups are "official" and which ones aren't. For example, I found two "official stanford class of 2013" groups. I didn't know which one was legit, but after browsing around Stanford's admitted student website, I found a link from Stanford's page to the correct facebook group, and I joined that one. So perhaps other schools have links from their own websites to their respective facebook groups as well?</p>
<p>It's especially interesting because the "commercial firm" attempting to mine students actually has a College Confidential link -- they are College *<strong><em>, and College Confidential posts their rankings on the College Confidential site (see: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visits/college_rank_summary.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visits/college_rank_summary.html</a>. A bit of research shows that College *</em></strong> people may have been posting links to the "spam" Official Face Book sites here on College Confidential. Interestingly, although College Confidential Terms of Service says no links to websites should be posted, the links posted here on CC to College ******* Facebook pages have NOT been deleted. Coincidence? Maybe. But be aware that what seems like "innocent" discussion on the internet may not always be what it seems.</p>
<p>The bottomline: while everyone wants to connect online to other people, it is important to use a great deal of caution in these matters. You will have PLENTY of time to connect with other students AFTER you enroll. That may be a better choice than trusting seeming "friends" met online.</p>