CTN Consulting

Facebook and Other Phishing Scams

Today, a good friend of mine forwarded me an email from Facebook asking if it was legitimate or not. The subject of the email was “Your Account will be Disabled” and the content included a link to enter your credentials to reactivate it. At quick glance, it did look legitimate. The email had the Facebook blue color scheme and the sender’s address was noreply@facebook.com.

But after looking closer at the link, although it included Facebook.com in it, the domain was not that of Facebook’s. It turns out it was a phishing scam.

My recommendation is that whenever you get such an email, never click on the link provided.  Browse to Facebook’s web page as you normally would and see if you are able to successfully log in. Further, contact Facebook directly asking them if the content of the email is true. This would apply to any account one may have.

Based on research done by Kaspersky Labs for the first quarter of 2010, Facebook is the number 4 target for online phishing attacks – beating out Google and the IRS! What are the top three, you ask? Paypal. Ebay. HSBC.

For the full report, please go to http://www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204792117/Spam_evolution_January_March_2010.