Fake Facebook Notifications

Mark Berry December 4, 2012

It seems that fake notification emails from social networking sites are the #1 way that spammers and virus writers try to lure you to their sites. Here’s an example of a fake Facebook notification email and how to tell:

Help! My Yahoo / Hotmail / Facebook Was Hacked!

Mark Berry September 28, 2010

In the last few weeks the personal accounts of at least four of my acquaintances have been hacked. As you may have experienced, when your friend’s account is hacked, you start getting emails that appear to be from them, but which actually contain some kind of spam.

Facebook: Scam Central

Mark Berry June 3, 2010

In the last 24 hours I received two invitations from different Facebook friends to sign up for “events.” Both emails actually came from Facebook, and both included the first and last name of my friend as the person extending the invitation. The first promised me a $1000 Best Buy gift certificate:

The second was “only” for free ring tones, but besides the sender, it actually lists two other people I know as invitees:

Generous as they were, I didn’t accept these invitations, since I figured that would lead either to a virus site, a phishing site, or (worst) sending the invitation to all of my Facebook friends.

A few rules of thumb:

• If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
• If out of the blue, friends suddenly invite you to “events” that are supposedly product giveaways, don’t accept. You might send them a private email suggesting that they change their Facebook password in case it’s been hacked.
• Facebook is not a secure platform. Assume that anything you put on Facebook will be available to any Page, fan club, event, or friend that somehow earns the trust or interest of one of your friends. Set your privacy settings as high as possible, don’t post your birthday, and consider blocking Facebook access on work computers.

Phony Facebook Email

Mark Berry June 3, 2010

Recently I received a very legitimate-looking email supposedly from Facebook. It wanted me to click on a link to read a message. Even though the visible link text shows the link going to facebook.com, the actual link would have taken me to a Romanian web site.

The trick:  in Outlook 2007, hover over (do not click on) the link with your mouse. The real destination will appear in a small window. If the address doesn’t match the one in the email, or if you are not sure it is the valid address of a trusted vendor, don’t click on it!