Is it dangerous to accept a video chat from a stranger who contacted you on Facebook?
Totally! Many hackers extort money from you by creating fake Facebook accounts. Our suggestion is that under no circumstances should you approve of a stranger’s friend request on Facebook nor answer a video call from strangers. Why? We will explain.
One of the most common methods of fraud is chatting. You may be a young girl who thinks that a charming boy is chatting with you. While all this talk is to convince you to send nude pictures of yourself. As soon as the abuser’s target is met, his threats begin.
The way most abusers work is to use photos or videos as bait to extort money from you. Now, if these conversations took place on a social network such as Facebook, he also has access to your friends and family list. So, with a bit of research on them, he can give you information that you think he knows about your family. Then, by threatening to tell your family that you sent me nude photos, he will force you to do so if you do not deposit the money.
Fraud through video calling
The same thing can happen with video calls from strangers. Someone will send you a friend request. You agree, and after chatting for a while, he asks you to make a video call. You will be happy to accept that you can finally see him. But what happens? When you show your face, he starts filming your conversation and does not show any pictures of himself. When you ask him to show his face, he dodges and hangs up.
Now he has a video of you talking to him. List of chats in which you may have said irrelevant things. And he compiles a video that replaces his video with his own nude image. It does not matter if you are a girl or a boy. This can happen in any case. The video is edited as if you asked him to get naked. So now there are two cases.
Or you are threatened that your video will be shared on social media, Shown to your family or friends. If you are married, it may be used as an excuse against you and your life together. And in each of these cases, you will be asked for money or to do something wrong. The second case is that the person who was naked in a video call to you is claimed to be under 18 years old, and you are threatened that you will be sued for having an inappropriate relationship with a person under 18 years old.
You can see the consequences of answering a video chat from a stranger. That’s why there is no need to answer video calls from people you do not know. It is not worth the risk.
