Thoughts on phishing scandals / Controlling Malware, Spyware, Phishing, and Spam

The Facebook phishing scandal is a setup where unknown individuals send Facebook users a relatively legitimate looking email from Facebook. The email is actually a scam though, an attempt to get a user to respond to the email and unknowingly give their email address and password to the scammer. The email looks friendly enough, but the intentions behind the email are most certainly not friendly, and I would warn anyone who receives a suspicious email to not respond or click any links.

I personally have seen the emails from these scammers several times in my own email account. I glanced at it the first time I saw it, and immediately doubted the legitimacy of the email. The email was sent by a friend of mine on Facebook, that I had never actually talked to. That in it self was sketchy, but the entire email looked off as well.

In order to effectively protect yourself from the dangers of phishing, it is important to keep a cautious eye on all emails that you receive. Consider this, almost no admin or official of any organization or website is going to ask you for passwords, or security questions. If you get an email that does look relatively legit, but it does ask for a some kind of private information, a quick Google search about it, could solve whether a said email is in fact legitimate or not. Another option would be to look it up on the site, or contact a support admin or official of that site about it. Never click any links in emails without giving the link a quick examination. The email that the Facebook scammers were sending out, looked like it was coming from facebook.com, but it was actually coming from Fbaction.net.

Phishing is a scam that is becoming more and more common through emails, and it is important for everyone to know the dangers that could be lurking in their inboxes.

Blog by Hans Harvey

Blog Post 3

Sources-
Author: Paul Boutin
Title: Facebook Phishing Attack in Progress: Beware Fbaction.net
Address: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/facebook-phishing-attack-in-progress/?_r=0