Are you setting yourself up to get ripped off with Facebook and Twitter?

[Michael Worthington]

This is probably old news to a lot of people here,
but I ran across this news story a little while ago
and thought I'd throw it in here for some that
may not be aware these things ARE happening.

Cyberthieves are targeting social sites like
Twitter and Facebook to harvest personal
information and possibly lure you into divulging
even more stuff such as passwords, etc..

http://budurl.com/rdsj

Michael

[RGallowitz]

I have a couple of close friends on facebook who have been terrorized by these phishing attackers. In the article it also says something about people being scammed out of their money because so called "friends" ask them to wire money.

Uhm...i personally think a person has to be freakishly naive if he/she is going to fall for that one LOL.

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Originally Posted by RGallowitz

I have a couple of close friends on facebook who have been terrorized by these phishing attackers. In the article it also says something about people being scammed out of their money because so called "friends" ask them to wire money.

Uhm...i personally think a person has to be freakishly naive if he/she is going to fall for that one LOL.

Most people shouldn't fall for that one. I wouldn't believe some random message on Facebook.

A problem could arise, however, if the attackers get into the person's blog, and then a blog post appears seeking assistance. That would give more credibility to the request. Of course, it would also depend upon the attackers matching the writing style of the blogger, but some people probably wouldn't even notice that.

If you compound that by attackers getting into the accounts of some of the blogger's friends, then they could post Facebook status messages and blog posts saying, yeah, the guy needs help! That would add social proof to the scam.

Right now, I think most scams are easy to spot. But, if the phishers get a little more clever, they could do more damage. And that's the thing to be concerned about.

[Michael Worthington]

Originally Posted by RGallowitz

Uhm...i personally think a person has to be freakishly naive if he/she is going to fall for that one LOL.

I agree with you on that.

I spent years on various computer forums and sites
before MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and other places
like this ever existed so I'm fairly well educated to
a lot of the scams and tactics used, and can fairly
well spot most of the new ones when they come out.

Plus, I learned years ago to not trust anybody asking
for passwords and such in an email or PM. My first
internet connection was on AOL and it was common
back in '99 to get two or three emails a week saying
that my account was compromised or about to be
shut down and I needed to click on the link to verify
my information.

And yes, I fell for the first one. Fortunately, it didn't
cause any damage before I learned better and changed
my password.

However,

There is a huge number of people (some even right here
on this forum) that just got their first computer and
can barely get online to send emails and make forum posts.

As far as they know 'phishing' is something you do
with a piece of string and a hook!

These people are prime targets for scams such as this,
especially the "Baby Boomers" who are coming online
late in life.

There are a lot of uninformed folks out there that don't
have a clue this stuff exists, and more coming online
every day.

A lot of them are going to be easy pickings for these
scammers.

Michael