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D

id you know there is an actu-
al law in Judaism prohibiting 
the theft of one’s knowledge? 
Known as geneivat da’at, the principle 
states that fooling someone and causing 
them to have a mistaken assumption, 
belief or impression leads the deceiving 
individual to be held responsible for the 
deceived person’s actions. 
 In Judaism, geneivat da’at is consid-
ered to be a worse offense than lying or 
cheating. The repercussions often nega-
tively affect many more people than only 
the original individual who was duped. 
In the internet age, I have seen many 
instances of geneivat da’at occur when 
innocent people are misled by fraudulent 
email messages, websites, text messages 
or social media posts. Many times, the 
result of these individuals being victims 
of geneivat da’at is that their identity is 
stolen, which is a nightmare scenario. 
Not surprisingly, it is usually older peo-
ple who fall victim to this.
Facebook is certainly one of the most 
common places in which users over a 
certain age (we’ll call them “Boomers”) 

become deceived. Most of the duplicate 
friend requests I receive on Facebook are 
from fake accounts posing as older users. 
These illegitimate Facebook requests are 
part of a scam. The Facebook user often 
will post a legitimate message on their 
Facebook account letting their friends 
know that they shouldn’t accept any new 
Facebook friend requests from them 
because their profile has been duplicat-
ed, but they may not realize the serious-
ness of this act.
This scam involves a nefarious per-
son (often in a foreign country) making 
virtual copies of real Facebook accounts 
by copying the photos and information 
from the real account’s “About” page to 
the fake ones. They then send friend 
requests to the friends listed on the 
real account. While some might find it 
humorous that so many seniors have 
had their Facebook accounts mirrored, 
the scam is more insidious than many 
realize. 
After the scammer has fooled enough 
of the person’s friends to accept the 
friend requests on the fake account, 

there are many ways the scammer can 
trick others now that they have stolen 
someone’s identity on the social net-
working site. The scammer may request 
a gift card, entice you to play a game 
that downloads malicious software (mal-
ware) to your computer or trick you into 
downloading a virus that shares your 
personal data.
If you receive a friend request from 
someone you are already friends with, 
search your friend list to see if you are 
still friends with that person. If you are, 
you have likely received a friend request 
from a fake Facebook account that was 
duplicated from a legitimate account. 
You can contact your friend by Facebook 
Messenger, by phone or send them an 
email or text message to verify if the 
new friend request was intentional. If it 
was not, they can report the duplicate 
account to Facebook to shut it down.
There are many other ways seniors 
are being taken advantage of on the 
web by hackers and scammers. Through 
my company, Access Technology, I am 
often contacted by seniors unsure if an 

Don’t Get Taken 
Advantage of Online

RABBI JASON MILLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

OUR COMMUNITY
JEWS IN THE DIGITAL AGE