Back when I was not a part of the social media giant, I was hesitant about joining Facebook. I remember BBC running some news reports on Mark Zuckerberg and his creation, with special concerns about the privacy of the users; however at that point the privacy concerns were limited to Facebook accessing our information to target special ads at us while now the concerns are of a different nature altogether.
What Sophos Labs and McAfee have deduced recently is that Facebook users are being heavily targeted by phishing scams. If you do not know what these are, phishing scams are fake websites which look like the login pages of the websites you have accounts on. When you enter your username and password, the scamsite gets your information.
Facebook is vulnerable to such attacks because the majority of Facebook users are not very well technology-aware. The latest phishing scam included a message that fooled users into believing that Facebook had contacted them for their own security. Here is what the scam message read:
Dear user of Facebook ,
Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed. You can find your new password in attached document.
Thanks,
Your Facebook.
Of course the attached file was malware which infected the host’s computer.
All internet users should learn to protect themselves from such scams. Any files that seem suspicious (have attachments, are too short, sound too casual, are addressed to a ‘general’ public and not particularly to you) should be ignored.
But if one does fall prey to a computer infection, nothing can help but a competent antivirus solution. Therefore you should go for the best antimalware software solutions out there and keep their definition up-to-date.
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