Tech savvy crooks and criminals are increasingly using popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace as tools for their latest phishing schemes.<\/p>\n
Cybercrooks realize that popular social networks contain a wealth of personal information contributed by their growing user base.<\/p>\n
Over the past 3 years almost 3,200 account hijacking cases on social networks were reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. The Internet Crime Complaint Center is a partnership between the FBI; the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.<\/p>\n
Fake profile updates, emails, video and links are used to trick social network users into revealing personal information about themselves on scam sites, including logon IDs and passwords.<\/p>\n
Once a person’s social network account is hacked, the criminals can trick their list of friends and repeat the crime on other people. Social networks provide plenty of opportunity to trick more people – the average Facebook user has 120 friends on their list.<\/p>\n
The huge growth in social networks has created great tools for cybercriminals. Facebook alone has 300 million registered people.<\/p>\n
Cybercriminals are experts at using social engineering to trick people. They can use a friend’s social network profile to trick you into thinking the said person is in trouble and needs financial help, causing some to give out personal and financial information.<\/p>\n
A 2005 study from Indiana University showed that as much as 70% of social network phishing scams are successful.<\/p>\n
The Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 72,000 complaints about Internet fraud in 2008 that amounted to $264.6 million in financial loss, with each victim losing an average of $931 USD.<\/p>\n
Social networks are responding to this new threat.<\/p>\n
Facebook has created computer systems that detect phished user accounts. They can recognize and lock user accounts that send an unusually high amount of messages to friends.<\/p>\n
MySpace compiles blacklists of phony user accounts to stop people from clicking on phishing links.<\/p>\n