I thought I would share with you a little incident that happened to me last night. Hopefully it will bring home two points that I will share with you in advance:
1. If you get an IM from one of your friends on Facebook (likely someone you don’t really know all that well or haven’t seen in a long time) asking for money, you should consider that it might be a scam before rushing out to wire it off to them, and
2. Be sure to use a secure password with Facebook.
Here’s why.
Last night, I got a message from one of my Facebook contacts. The person told me that he was stuck in Essex, UK, and that he’d been robbed at gunpoint. They took his wallet, cell phone, everything. He then said that he was unable to get tho his hotel, that he was using a computer at a library, and that he needed $1500 to pay for his hotel room, blah blah blah. He even said stuff about how the US consulate had guaranteed him a flight home, and that he needed to get a temporary passport or something like that.
Needless to say, I didn’t send him any money–this had scam written all over it. But just to be sure, I tried asking him if he could give me the number of his wife or someone else who could wire me the money. He then said that he’d check his e-mail, and gave me some US phone number for a fax line.
But it’s likely that none of this would have happened if my friend had chosen a more secure password. Before, people were hijacking accounts for the relatively benign purpose of spamming people, but now they’re pulling out-and-out scams. So be sure to protect your online accounts with secure passwords, and don’t send money to people you don’t really know.
I think this is a common facebook scam. I heard about a similar one a year or so ago, and I think it’s even been in the local media here.
It’s almost trivial to take over someone’s facebook account, hotmail account, whatever. All they have to do is have an unpatched version of Internet Explorer and visit a well-crafted page. In some instances you can even infect a computer by just displaying an image in Internet Explorer. Then once the scammer has your computer, they install a keylogger and grab your passwords.
I recently deactivated my Facebook account…I found everyone I think I really wanted to find and the trivial crap I was finding everytime I logged on was RIDICULOUS…and sometimes downright slutty… I had some friends of friends etc. that thought they should share. I think all these sites like Twitter, MySpace etc. are for the extremely lonely who find it interesting to know when someone they don’t even know had lunch in 130 characters or less…We have become so anti-social and reclusive…I LOVE this site though
I had some friends of friends etc. that thought they should share. 