Femme fatales: befriending potential victims on sites such as Facebook and Tagged.com.

Singapore's Police Force has warned of femme fatales befriending potential victims on sites such as Facebook and Tagged.com.

According to Singapore's Police Force, the women enter steamy webcam conversations with their prey, where they strip and encourage their male victim to do the same.

What the man doesn't realise, as
he feverishly rips his clothes off and agrees to engage in various sexual acts in front of the camera, is that his female love interest is secretly recording everything that's going on.

Therefore the male victim is then blackmailed for money by the woman who threatens to circulate the compromising photographs and videos.

To avoid you becoming the next man to be duped in such a fashion, here are some of their tips:

• Always be wary of strangers befriending you on social networks. If they're suddenly showing a romantic interest in you, ask yourself honestly if it's likely that they've selected you for online love out of the billions of other internet users.
• Never put yourself into a compromising position on your webcam. In short, keep your clothes on. as you can't be sure if the person at the other end isn't making a video recording. At the same time, you shouldn't give away too much personal information to someone you don't really know.
• If anyone does ever attempt to extort money from you online, don't pay them. Contact the police instead. You may be embarrassed about the mess you have got yourself into, but the authorities are the right ones to investigate and (hopefully) bring the culprit to justice.

‘’The threat doesn't just lie with webcam blackmail either. You can imagine how a man, believing he is being seduced online by a sexy woman, might be all too eager to click on a link she suggests or run a malicious program on his computer. Before he knows it, his computer could be under the control of a hacker.’’

Here is a video of a Singapore TV programme which reconstructed just this kind of crime.

 (img from nekedsecurity).