Facebook phishing scams – were you hooked

Chris Miller — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 03:29:53 +0000

Recently rash of the same type of phishing scam has been showing up on Facebook in numerous manifestations. They are all the same premise and I have seen the same people infected over and over by not following simple safety rules. Interestingly, people of all ages click it just the same, not just our kids.

The goal of these scams is pretty harmless in the big picture, but could be used maliciously if desired. Most of them prompt you via a friend’s infected computer with a chat or email notice asking if this was you in some video or picture. The link is via an URL shortening system (hides the real URL, see Bit.ly as a great shortening service) and takes you to a website than then infects your computer. From there is spreads and does the same to your friends. Thanks to ChrisKing for the picture

So what do you do for prevention? A couple simple steps would stop the majority of the spreading:

Update your virus signatures daily and never let your service/subscription expire. Putting it off even for a week can open you to an attack. I see far too many families trusting that the virus software that expired 4 months ago is still ok. Spend the few dollars to protect your identity and computer
Silly I know, but stop clicking these unknown links. How many of us actually might be in an embarrassing video or picture we don’t know about? Think about it. Most of the time you were there right, meaning mentally?

One trick I have not seen yet, but would be the next logical step. The same chat or email trick with a comment about is this your spouse/wife/husband/child in some video or picture with a comment about them doing something inappropriate. How many of you would fight that temptation to click the link?

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Facebook phishing scams – were you hooked