Phishing scam targets Facebook members' accounts and their friends.

A phishing scam that seems to have hooked and hacked many Facebook members' accounts since early this year appears to have picked up in intensity over the last month. Hackers are logging into users' accounts, but it's actually not the hacked member who falls victim to the lucrative scam. It's their friends.
It was a bit of a surprise when my friend Blaire sent me a chat message on Facebook earlier this week to tell me she was in London when she had just come up to Manhattan two days earlier and mentioned nothing of the upcoming trip. It was even more surprising when she told me she was mugged and robbed at gunpoint a night earlier, and needed me to send her nearly a thousand bucks so she could get back to the U.S. "The hacking mechanisms have not really changed, but the fact that we are on these social networking sites - that's all about being with your friends online, sharing information - makes us more vulnerable to social hacking," said CNet's Dan Ackerman. Ackerman said scammers break into social networking accounts the same way they hack into e-mail. "They hack into a third party Web site that maybe you're a member of, something where the security is not that great and if they get a list of the members, chances are your user name and password is probably the same on Facebook or Twitter or any of these social networking sites," he said. To protect yourself, security experts say always use different user names and passwords for every site you log on to. Additionally, Facebook tells users never click on strange links, even if they've been sent by friends. "You have to remember you're still on a computer network, you're not face to face with the person," said Ackerman. Something else to be on the lookout for: if you're logged onto a social network site, and you click on a link that takes you to a page that appears to ask you to login again to whatever site you're using. That may be a fake link in which the information really gets sent to the hacker when you enter it. You should always check the URL atop your browser if you're not sure. Often times hackers will create similar links that might have one minor difference in them, something like www.ifacebook.com or www.facebo0k.com.


Link: http://wcbstv.com/local/facebook.london.phishing.2.1148617.html