Ethiopian Review

Phishers Hack Into Compromised Accounts, Tell User’s Friends They’ve Been Robbed In London, Need Money Immediately.

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.

Turns out Blaire wasn’t even in London, she was at work in Baltimore, clueless to what was going on, and it didn’t take me long to realize someone had hacked into her account and was fishing for sympathetic friends who would open their wallets to help a friend in trouble.

“I need your help,” the fake Blaire asked me. “I want you to loan me.”

Consider that the line that gave it away.

“I want you to loan me.” Who says that?

I played along to get some more info so I could report the incident. They told me to wire them $975 and have it sent to 147, Cromwell Road, Kensington, London.

“The money will be sent to me via western union. I hope you have your credit card with you? Did you have it with you at the moment?” the hacker asked.

Yeah. I’m right on top of that. While I was quick to the punch line, a Google search turned up plenty of similar incidents, including ones about a few folks who weren’t so Web savvy and lost a wad of cash in an effort to reach out to a desperate friend.

It’s one of the latest Internet scams, computer experts say, an apparent spawn of the e-mail scam in which someone writes to tell you, “I’m a Nigerian who inherited $2 million and need to wire the money into your account.” Hackers are breaking into social networking accounts and posing as the user. They then send emails, instant messages or Tweets to friends and family saying they’re in trouble and urgently plead for money.

“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.

If you think your account has been compromised, the first and most preventive step you can take is simply to reset your password and make sure no other e-mail addresses are permitted for your account.

Though it’s hard to say how many users have been hacked, a simple search on “Facebook London scam” or “Facebook hacking scam” will yield dozens of results that seem to start in January and continue throughout the year. But most recently, there are numerous stories over the past week from sites like Sky News, CBC, Irish Central, and Scam Slammer where people are reporting that they or someone they know were victims of the London scam.

One report even saw a Facebook user chatting with the hacker to admit he was a fraud. The hacker eventually revealed he was a desperate student named Tunde from Lagos, and that he needed money badly so he could go to college. He said he promised to stop once he could pay for school and even asked the guy he tried to scam to be his Facebook friend.

After getting all the info I could out of the hacker, I too called him out on his ploy. He called me an expletive and then deleted me from Blaire’s friends list.

In a statement, Facebook said it’s working to protect its users. They monitor and will suspend accounts based on suspicious activity, similar to what your bank does if it starts to see a number of unusual charges.

Blaire’s account was suspended after many of the dozens of people who the hacker tried to reach out to complained about the incident. Fortunately, she got her name and account back, and we were happily reunited as Facebook pals.

As for the hackers, experts say it’s unlikely these kind of crooks will be caught.

(By Steve Fink | wcbstv)