Old Scam Making Alarming Comeback on Facebook

By Rebecca Seaman

Remember the classic “Nigerian 419” scam; where a rich Prince or Bank Executive from a foreign country just needed your banking information to facilitate a transfer of funds? In exchange for your help, you would receive a percentage of those funds; Gratis. And just like that, you could make a profit. Unfortunately, the only ones profiting were the thieves, who would use the banking information given to them to drain the funds from your account and disappear.

Hopefully, you didn’t fall for this scam, but thousands of would-be Good Samaritans and those hoping to make a quick profit did-some of them even went to Nigeria to meet the ‘Prince’ or ‘Bank Executive’ themselves. More on this here.

A disturbing new spin on the classic “Nigerian 419” scam has emerged recently. You may be too savvy to fall for the Prince, but what if you received word that one of your own friends or loved ones was in danger and needed your help and funds immediately? Many of us, no matter how aware we may be, would do anything to help our loved ones in a time of need. In fact, a recent article by Bob Sullivan of The Red Tape Chronicles highlights just such a scenario:

One evening, Bryan Rutberg’s daughter ran into his bedroom asking why he’d changed his Facebook status to read “BRYAN IS IN URGENT NEED OF HELP!!!.”  Initially, Bryan let this go, until his wife woke him to ask him what was wrong. By this time the incident had his attention and soon, he realized his Facebook account had been hacked. Friends began to call incessantly-several of them had received an email stating that Bryan had been held up at gunpoint while travelling abroad and needed cash to return home.  One concerned friend even wired $1,200.00 to London via Western Union.

Bryan began an urgent search for a way to reach Facebook and stop the hackers. But by this time the hackers had managed to lock Bryan out of his own account. They had changed his username and password so that he couldn’t access his Facebook page. Because of this, he couldn’t remove the ominous status message or contact his friends to let them know this was a scam. The hackers had even “de-friended,” his wife, so he was unable to post a message in her account alerting his friends to the situation and let them know he was really safe at home.  Eventually, he was able to get his account deactivated; but not before his friend had lost a considerable amount of money, not to mention the time it took for Bryan to sort out the mess. “It was all over by Thursday (the next day) but not without a hell of a lot of drama” he said. By then, one concerned colleague had even called Microsoft to warn the firm that Rutberg was in trouble.

Bryan and his friend who wired the money were both educated Microsoft employees; which speaks to the fact that anyone can fall victim to new and increasingly sophisticated attacks. Bryan was the victim of a newer, more precise version of the “Nigerian 419” scam.  Instead of sending out millions of spam messages in the hopes of fooling a small percentage of recipients, Cyber Thieves are getting much more personal in their attacks, using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to victimize users. In Bryan’s case, criminals were able to steal his Facebook password, steal his Facebook identity, and change his status to make it seem he was in trouble and needed help.

What can you do to protect yourself from social networking scams? A few basic precautions are as follows:

·      Change your password regularly, be sure that it is unique and preferably alphanumeric

·      It’s not a good idea to have the same password for more than one account

·      Be very cautious of any friend or contact asking for money or for personally identifying information. If you do receive such a request, call the person and verify their request over the phone

·    Have more than one email address, in case one address is hacked or compromised 

If you feel that your Facebook identity has been compromised, Facebook has established a link to report the abuse. Note: It’s difficult to find navigating Facebook’s home page; so keep this link handy. http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=account_compromised