Facebook Scams - ID Theft

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Dave Obee: Coming face to face with a Facebook scam
By Dave Obee, Times Colonist December 31, 2010

I had an urgent email a while back from Leo, a Facebook friend in California. He said was stranded in London and needed money fast. He wanted me to help.

Odd, I thought. He never mentioned he was going to England. So I fired off a note to him using another email address, looking for confirmation. He quickly wrote back, told me his crisis was real and asked me again to wire money.

Still odd, I thought. So I sent an email to a mutual friend, one who lives a couple of blocks from Leo and would surely have been the first person he would contact in an emergency. I asked her if Leo was OK.

Definitely not, she said. All his email accounts have been hacked and someone is sending out fake messages asking for money.

We all have to be careful about Internet privacy and security. One slip and we can found ourselves scrambling for days to set things right.

I thought of Leo this week when I stumbled across a new scam, one cleverly designed to capture your Facebook user name and password.

It's a website called Feaecebook. (Please don't go there; just take my word for it.)

It works in two ways. First, it's a typosquatting site, set up to catch people who make typing errors when they enter the web address. There are millions of sites like this, all just a letter or two away from the correct spellings of legitimate addresses.

Many have copied the look of the real thing, so people enter their information when asked. And the scammers chalk up another success.

The crooked wizards behind Feaecebook are more pro-active, practising something known as phishing.

I discovered the scam when I clicked on a video posted on someone else's Facebook wall. I was redirected to a page asking me to sign in to my Facebook account.

Warning bells went off. I was already signed in and smelled a rat, or at least a scam artist. I backed away.

But some of us will merrily enter our information again, because, by golly, we want to see that video.

The sign-in page looks identical to the real Facebook sign-in page, except it is part of the Feaecebook family of scams. Entering your user name and password hands the people at Feaecebook the information they need to sign in as you.

Your user name and password are worth money.

Crooks can sign in and change the password so you can't access your own account. They can add new videos and scam your Facebook friends in the same way, the fraud growing exponentially.

Once your Facebook identity is stolen, you will be on the outside watching other people doing things in your name.

They could be sending nasty messages, mining your emails for anything of note, trying to con your friends out of money or checking for friends who carelessly reveal their homes will be unoccupied while they holiday.

Internet scams come from all around the world.

In the case of Feaecebook, we can proudly claim a British Columbia connection, although it's a dubious one. The site was registered two days before Christmas, according to domain name records, by someone in Vancouver.

But really, why would scamsters use their own names and addresses? The guy in Vancouver is just another victim; the real culprits could be anywhere in the world.

A lot of phishing sites don't last a long time. Shining a light on them tends to take away their power to con people. But more will rise up to take their place.

All of this is something to keep in mind as we set our goals for the new year. Along with losing weight, drinking less and giving more, we should remember to protect something quite close to us: Our identities.

One slip, and your email information will be available to nogoodniks.

So be careful out there. Don't use the same passwords on all of your accounts. Change the passwords from time to time.

And, for a start, resolve that you won't give your password to people who can't spell Facebook. They are not your friends.

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