Friday, March 26, 2010

Keeping Up with Online Scams - FACEBOOK

Facebook is no longer a Web site -- it's rapidly approaching the scale of the Internet itself. With over 350 million users, many young users spend more time on Facebook than on e-mail. That means scammers are now crawling all over Facebook, since they always go where the people go. There are hundreds of Facebook scams, such as phishing e-mails, Trojan horse infections, and misleading advertisements. The most current scam involves a notice appearing on the wall of user profiles as a message from a friend, saying “Hey, I got a new facebook account. Im going to delete this one, so add my new profile” then with a link that appears to be a link to the new profile.

Users fooled into resubmitting their Facebook details on this page then have their Facebook accounts hijacked and all of their contacts receive a similar message, propagating the phishing scam.

It’s not clear yet exactly what the phishing scammers are planning on using the compromised accounts for, or how far it has spread.

But the crime you should most worry about is Facebook impersonation. A criminal who hacks into your Facebook account can learn a staggering amount of information about you. Worse yet, he or she can gain trusted access to friends and family. We've seen plenty of stories that show Facebook friends can easily be tricked into sending money in response to believable pleas for help.

For this reason, it's time to upgrade your Facebook password (make it a strong password with letterS, numbers and symbols). Treat it like an online banking site. The stronger the password, the less chance of being hacked!

PLEASE BE VIGILANT WHEN IT COMES TO THE INTERNET - DON'T BE FOOLED BY ADVERTISEMENTS THAT SEEM TO GOOD TO BE TRUE, LINKS THAT ARE QUESTIONABLE, OR POP UPS THAT CLAIM YOUR COMPUTER NEEDS TO BE UPDATED. THE MORE CAUTIOUS YOU ARE, THE BETTER OFF YOU WILL BE.

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