New Facebook Scam is Really Nothing New
In case you didn’t hear, there’s “new” scam out there involving Facebook and other social networking sites.
It’s the old “your friend is in trouble” scam – and I doubt it will go very far. The way it works is, a scammer hacks into your Facebook account and then sends status updates to your friends and/or relatives, using the internal Facebook messaging system, telling them that you’re “in trouble” (maybe locked in a jail cell in Canada?) — and that they need to wire some money to help get you out.
I think the alarming thing is these scammers are able to masquerade as friends and relatives so easily. What’s more, they have access to information that they can use to fool you into believing that they are legit – that is, they already have some personal information about your friend or relative.
It’s a clever scam — but it’s based on an old trick. It used to be that these scams were carried out over the phone — but now there’s no need for a live interaction.
If you want to read more about it, click here. Just figured I’d help spread the word …
February 6th, 2009 at 9:50 am
The scammers aren’t calling people’s friends and whatnot. They are simply leaving a status update saying they are in some sort of trouble, have an emergency, etc. and having that person’s facebook friends wire money.
What they do is send out the same phishing e-mails out that all the other scammers do, and the suckers who reply give their user names and passwords to the phishers and then are screwed. Just like the PayPal, eBay and credit card scams.
If facebook was sending its users an legitimate e-mail, it would show up in their facebook-based mailbox, too. So for now, don’t trust any e-mail corespondance from facebook that is only in your regular e-mail box.
Trust me - I fell for it in the early days of phishing, and had both my eBay and PayPal accounts hacked.
February 6th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Thanks for clarifying Tim — you’re right that it’s message postings coming through Facebook, not phone calls or emails. I’ve since revised the post to make it more accurate.
Using the phone is the “old” way of doing the scam — however I think some people have their phone numbers on their Facebook pages, so the scam could probably be perpetrated that way too …
February 9th, 2009 at 10:15 am
There was a recent case like that though - with someone calling seniors and claiming to be a long-lost grandchild and needing money for a bus ticket back home. Now bus tickets are cheap, but multiply that by the number of gullible seniors and you’ve got a goldmine!