This story comes from MSNBC. It involves a Facebook user whose daughter notices that his Facebook status alerted all of his friends that he was in “urgent need of help.” Friends began calling to check on him and he then realized that his Facebook account had been hacked into. His Facebook friends received an email that he was robbed at gunpoint while traveling and needed money to get back home. One friend told him that he sent him $1,200 via Western Union. The only problem—this person never initiated the email or told his friends he was in trouble. Due to his face being associated with the account, friends thought that this was legit and wanted to help him out. He could not log in to his Facebook account to change the status or stop the emails, criminals locked him out of his own account! He could not even use his wife’s account to update his “wall” due to the criminals removing her from his friend list.

This is called the “Nigerian” or “419” scam or ploy. Criminals are using social networking websites, like Facebook, to hack into personal accounts and get countless friends to fall for it being the original account creator. Here is a quote the criminals used in the Facebook email: “Can you just get some money to us,” the imposter implored to one of ****’s friends. “I tried Amex and it’s not going through. … I’ll refund you as soon as am back home. Let me know please.” The victim’s picture was included with the email, so many thought this was legit. As mentioned earlier, a concerned friend/coworker sent $1,200 to the criminals, thinking they were the Facebook user.

The scary part for the victim was that he could not call Facebook to alert them of the scam and could not log in to stop it. Facebook admits that with millions of users, they do not have a phone number in place to contact them. They are reportedly making changes to increase security for the website.

The victim thinks that the criminals might have gotten his password by using a phishing email. These are emails that mimic those sent by the real website, but they are a “scam” copy made by those seeking your personal information.

All they can suggest at this time is that you be suspicious of anyone who asks you for money on Facebook. Call or contact them outside of Facebook before believing such a plea. Also, use different log in names and passwords for the various websites that you have to log into.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 12:16 pm and is filed under articles concerning 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.