If ever there was a reason to ensure you’re Facebook account is secure from intruders, a recent social [media] experiment by Joe Veix may have you thinking of a stronger password.
The question – What would happen if you gave everyone the lock and key to one communal Facebook account? Where anyone could access it and change any of the settings.
Veix – from deathandtaxesmag.com – created an account under the plain guise of John Smith, and posted the username and password on social media. The experiment had started.
And within an hour the password had been changed by someone, thus locking everyone out of the account.
A small hiccup but never mind. Veix reset the password and the experiment was back on.
Predictably, things got pretty weird and funny. First off the name of the account was changed to Maximilien Manning and the cover photo was just plain creey, as you can see below.
Then the cover photos and profile picture got changed a number of times, including to the Taco Bell logo and a picture of crispy bacon. The profile picture flipped between some eerie looking men and – once again – the Taco Bell logo.
The account – who we now dub Max since that seemed to be the longest serving name – started friend requesting many different people and liking pages in their hundreds – anything from “Adolf Hitler and vegetarianism” to the “Hungry Hungry Hippos” page.
Veix wrote of Max’s Liking activities –
Max liked 322 things, including: the Buffalo Bills; dozens of wedding planning pages; something like 50 pet crematoriums; a bunch of communist pages; numerous topic-specific memes (gym memes, soccer memes, farming memes, etc); Stacy’s Mom; Good Charlotte; 12 Street Fighter characters; Blockbuster; Elmer’s glue; the Spin Doctors; Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch;
and poop.
Veix was soon added as Max’s father, and stated that Veix and Max had a baby named Bobby. Max gave ISIS a 10/10 rating prompting Veix to claim that everyone who accessed the account was probably on a government watchlist by now, and the account location was moved between Nebraska, Bali, New Mexico and a dozen other places.
But perhaps the strangest thing involved the reoccurring theme of Taco Bell. Upon the profile picture and cover photo being changed to the Taco Bell logo, someone used the account over at the official Taco Bell Facebook Page, posing as a Taco Bell customer service representative and answering customer questions, including a response to Brennan who asked about a new sauce – Max wrote –
Hi Brennan, our new Diablo Sauce is being trialled at a small number of restaurants. It’s made from cow testicles, so it’s not suitable for vegetarians. We’re glad you like it. ^Max.
Oh, and Max also became a “fruitagician.”
So okay, the experiment went pretty much like everyone expected it to do – hundreds of people trying to be funny with the same Facebook account, with some amusing quotes, likes and cover photos.
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The interesting part for many is that whilst Veix performed the same experiment on Twitter and Instagram. However both those platforms shut down the account promptly. Instagram detecting it as spam – presumably because so many different people were logging into it – and Twitter suspended the account when someone used it to harass another Twitter user.
But why did the Max account on Facebook last so long? (It was eventually killed off Tuesday morning) Perhaps the more world-weary of us would assert that it is because Max was essentially the perfect Facebook user – providing lots of “personal” data, instigating lots of exchanges and interaction, no doubt clicking on a few Facebook ads along the way, and just a generally active user.
A spammy account certainly, but one that may drive a little revenue into Facebook’s pocket. The number one social networking site in the world was certainly in no hurry to terminate Max.
So why make sure that intruders have no chance of accessing your Facebook account? There are actually plenty of reasons, but in this case, because things could just get downright weird.
