Warning Facebook Users: You Could Be The Next Victim of Scamming
22 April, 2009 | One comment | Published under Blog | 280 views
I never thought someone would actually try to scam me online. I’ve been wary about this kind of stuff the time I learned about the risks of sharing information in the Internet but it was on April 21st, 2009, 7AM, that I tasted its experience first hand. Someone used my close friend’s Yahoo Messenger (YM) account and sent me messages asking seriously for financial help.
In the midst of my work early on that day’s morning, just right after breakfast, "Lynden," the name of a person with superior credibility and reputation in my life and a close friend sent me a message on YM that "she got mugged" in London, England, UK. Lynden and I are good friends and we met as classmates in our high school years here in the Philippines. However, she now lives and works in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
In the beginning of chat, I never felt any doubt at all because I initially believed that it was the real person whom I am chatting with. And with the disclosed event that "she" revealed, I was ultimately worried about "her" situation and immediately broadcasted on Twitter to find help desperately from people all over the world.
Although on chat "she" said that "she was in London and got mugged," I never doubted this statement as the real Lynden, although residing in Australia, is a professional person and already capable of traveling anywhere in world. And we never communicated online since the last time she visited my city to spend vacation last Christmas season.
What hinted me that it wasn’t the real person I thought I’m chatting with while I was conversing with the scammer is that "she" couldn’t speak or write our local dialect, Cebuano, which the real Lynden uses every time she communicates with me both online and offline. Already doubting, I kept digging more and throwing more questions to the scammer. I asked for more personal information that Lynden and I both knew (like the similarity of the middle name of her mother and mine, Lynden’s middle name, and the name of beach resort we went last January). I’m surprised that the scammer was able to give me a correct answer of Lynden’s middle name. However, wrong answers were given to me on other questions confirming the validity of my doubts.
Twitter proved helpful in this kind of situation as some folks replied back and gave me advices on what to do and showed me some useful information that this scamming technique is not really new. What worried me was that this scam originated from Facebook’s vulnerability or the account owner’s negligence or recklessness to secure her account. Otherwise, it could be in other means like she not knowingly used malicious software or scripts on her computer, or perhaps, permitted dangerous Facebook apps that finally stole her personal information that resulted a hack to her Facebook account.
You can read here the full chat and some screenshots of this scam attempt.
To all other Facebook users who might be reading this: be careful. You could be the next victim.
1 Comment »
Electric gates
on
Facebook has been open to spam since day 1. I thing all the requests you have to igonre on a daily basis could be classed as spam
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL