Mesh Marketer

Facebook Premium/Gold/Beta is FAKE

June 3, 2009 by mm

And don’t let any­one try to con­vince you otherwise!

After a “friend” on Face­book shared with me a link to a group on Face­book called Face­book Pre­mium Account, she told me that it was in Beta and that Face­book was going to start charg­ing for their reg­u­lar ser­vice and that they were giv­ing out these accounts and that when Face­book started charg­ing that my account would be free. I’m sure this per­son had the best of inten­tions in mind to save me from pay­ing in the future for Face­book and to show me a thing or two about Face­book I didn’t know, but this was sim­ply absurd.

I looked at the cat­e­gory for this group and it was listed under “Just for Fun — Face­book Clas­sics” … So? What? That isn’t a clue? I then looked at the admin for the group and it was some guy named Gene Sy. I looked up Gene Sy’s pro­file and he sure didn’t look like the kind of guy who would be grant­ing free passes for a com­pany that’s prob­a­bly worth a bil­lion dol­lars if it were sold tomor­row; he didn’t even look like the kind of guy who would be admin­is­ter­ing a beta pro­gram. So? What? Am I the only one who sees these things?

She coun­tered with the argu­ment that there are so many peo­ple who were signed up. OK. So? Just because a hun­dred peo­ple jump off a bridge, then I should do the same thing? No. I’m not smarter than any­one else, I just notice these things that she didn’t. She really wanted to believe she had told me the truth. She started argu­ing and… Well, let’s just say that she’s no friend because friends are the kind of peo­ple who are will­ing to con­sider that they are wrong and they admit it when they might be or are. I’m wrong about things on a reg­u­lar basis. I thought I had just brought home cucum­bers and they were zuc­chini squash but I was wrong. And I’ve been wrong about sev­eral other things this week already. So? What? Am I the only who admits these things?

So here’s what I did after the friend had unfriended me. I wrote to Face­book at their intel­lec­tual prop­erty infringe­ment address. Here’s what they wrote back:

Hi Joseph,

Thanks for pro­vid­ing this infor­ma­tion. Please pro­vide a link to this group or the mes­sage you received and I will look into this further.

Thanks for con­tact­ing Facebook,

Kieran
User Oper­a­tions
Facebook

I wrote back and told Kieran that there are so many of these groups that all (he? she? what kind of name is kieran?) you would have to do is search for “Face­book Pre­mium” and you’ll get over 40 hits. Most are the fake groups.

I’ll update you on this scam as I can.

Your com­ments are most wel­come and if you have prob­lems post­ing, please write to me by my first name at my domain name. Thanks!

Here’s what one of those group logo looks like. They didn’t even bother to get the right font!

UPDATE: IT’S FAKE ACCORDING TO FACEBOOK

Here’s the email I got from them after ask­ing for absolute confirmation:

Hi Joseph,

The mes­sage you received is false and can be safely dis­re­garded. I apol­o­gize for any con­fu­sion this has caused. If you have any fur­ther ques­tions, please visit our Help Cen­ter at the fol­low­ing address:

Thanks for con­tact­ing Facebook,

Kieran
User Oper­a­tions
Facebook