With more than 150 million visitors each day, Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites on the Internet today. It’s popular because it’s fun – you can go there and chat with friends, connect with old friends and search for new friends.

But with all that popularity and fun comes the opportunity for thieves to find a way to scam people out of their personal information.

But how does it work? Scammers will ask to be added to your profile as your friend, and then they watch your activity and search your information to get what they need.

If a thief believes he’s earned your trust, he will begin sending you scam e-mails, with such tactics as:

• Friend in distress: The worst has happened and I need money fast.
• Phishing: You receive an e-mail that has a virus attached that will allow a hacker to access your Facebook account and obtain your personal information.
• Viral Wall: You receive an e-mail that has a virus attached that allows your friend to not only access your personal information, but the information of your friends when you communicate with them via your wall.

Hackers have even gained access to Facebook user pages and, claiming to be the person depicted in the profile, asked friends for financial help because of a “crisis.” Once the person responds, believing his or her friend to be in need, the thief will request that money be wired to a given address.

Scammers also have recently baited Facebook users with a gift card, which duped 40,000 Facebook users. The scam worked like this: the thieves marketed a free Ikea $1,000 gift card via a fake fan page. The same idea has also been used for Whole Foods, Target, iTunes and Wal-Mart cards. To get the cards, a user must enter a name, address and e-mail address. They are then pointed to another page that offers products and services, with the option to enter credit card details if the offers appeal to them.

The solution? Simple. Don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know. Don’t open e-mails if you aren’t sure where they came from. And last, don’t give enter your personal information on any site that isn’t secure. You can check this by checking the URL for “https” rather an “http.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Identity Theft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.