Posted on 05/01/2009 12:00:09 AM PDT by JoeProBono
It was one of those things she never does. But, Wednesday night, when Amory Wooden, 27, received a Facebook message from a friend directing her to a new Web site, she clicked on it. Not only that, once fbstarter.com popped up in her browser, she typed in her Facebook user name and password. She had no idea she'd been hoaxed until Thursday morning, when messages from Facebook friends started pouring in about how they all fell for it. "I don't know why it stumped everybody," the New Yorker told ABCNews.com. "I've been on Facebook for five years … I never message through Facebook."
For the second time in two days, users of the popular social networking site were attacked by a phishing virus attempting to harvest users' e-mail addresses and passwords. Sites Harvest E-Mail, Password Information The new virus, fbstarter.com, directs users to a Web site that mirrors Facebook's log-in page. Thinking they're on a Facebook-related site, users enter their e-mail addresses and passwords.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
“But once the renegade program has this information, it hacks into users’ accounts and re-sends the link to all their friends, saying “Look at this!” and perpetuating the scam. The virus that was on the prowl Wednesday, FBAction.net, was very similar.
Although it’s difficult to know the motivation of the people behind the attack, Facebook is an appealing target for spammers because users store so much personal information on it. In addition to names and e-mail addresses, some people keep their birthdays, addresses and telephone numbers. Once hackers have that information they can sell it to others on a black market.’
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