May 22, 2006
BY STEPHANIE ZIMMERMANN Consumer Reporter
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With its easy sharing of jokes, gossip, photos and videos within a virtual community of young people, the Web site MySpace.com has rocketed to second place in worldwide popularity, with an estimated 78 million users.
But the site also has brought concerns about teens meeting strangers online. And now there's a new worry: a "phishing" scam that experts say could compromise teens' -- or their parents' -- financial information.
As with other phishing scams, in which con artists create realistic-looking Web sites using the names of well-known banks or other corporations, the MySpace scam tricks people into going to a copycat page and signing on. Once the user gets on the site, their computer can be infected with software that can later capture keystrokes typed while visiting legitimate banking or shopping sites, said Hiep Dang, director of threat research for Aluria Software, a division of EarthLink and a member of the Digital Knights fraud prevention group.
Looking for credit card numbers
Scam artists can use computer programs to sort through the captured keystroke information, looking for sequences that appear to be credit card numbers, PINs or passwords. Other scams involve MySpace profiles that are completely fake and lead to links that can infect your computer, Dang said.
Todd Davis, CEO of LifeLock, a company that sells identity theft prevention services, says such scams can cause years of hassles for victims. Stolen identities are sold on the Internet for as little as $20.
MySpace has recently been in the news because of concerns that younger users may be unwittingly exchanging personal information with older strangers. Earlier this month, a 27-year-old Naperville man was charged with felony indecent solicitation of a child and a misdemeanor charge of distribution of harmful material after allegedly trying to arrange a sexual tryst with a 14-year-old local girl he met on MySpace.
MySpace spokeswoman Dani Dudeck declined to comment. The site cautions users to omit information that would make it easy for a stranger to find them and urges people to report identity theft, cyberbullying, inappropriate content and other types of abuse.
Thanks Smartass.
I appreciate the info.
OPINION: MySpace, like Yahoo is not on my personal preferences list.
Oh my, more good news!