Posted on 08/28/2009 9:29:09 PM PDT by Wardenclyffe
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 message on Facebook earlier this week to tell me she was in London. It was even more surprising when she told me she was 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 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 played along to get some more info so I could report the incident. They told me to wire them $975.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at wcbstv.com ...
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.
sound familiar?
This is fairly common. I know a couple of people who had their Hotmail email accounts hacked. Emails were sent out to their entire lists of contacts, purportedly from them, with the same type of story: In a foreign country, everything stolen, please wire a thousand dollars.
It only take one person who falls for the scam to make it profitable.
Common sense used to be common. Now it seems to be an uncommon commodity. Anyone who buys into this type of BS deserves what they get when they pursue their “get rich quick” plan. Sorry, but I’m lacking sympathy for these idiots.
“...she was robbed at gunpoint...”
Of course it’s fake...guns are illegal in England.
Signing this one cuz. Yo, the only 419 victims I felt bad for were old ladies who thought they were sending monies to OMFG Orphans in Abuja. If you get spammed joe job there asses back.
日本＊ピング＊ (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)
Even in a 3rd world nation like the Philippines, in the event of a screw up (which happened to me once), showing the printout of my original purchase quickly cleared things up.
This is one, really, really bogus scam. So long as you have your passport, you can always get back to your origin.
ya but passports are simple paper bro.
Not with RFID chips inside them (like current US passports).
No comment on biometrics : (
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