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Jan.29

11:24 AM ET

Thursday, 29 Jan 2009

Facebook Fights Back

Posted By:Jane Wells

Topics:Internet | Media | Print Media

Sectors:Media

CNBC.com
Facebook got back to me about the IM scam I first reported yesterday. This is a new scam where Facebook "friends" instant message you on the site asking for money because they're in trouble.

Trouble is, they're not really your "friends", they're people who've hacked into friends' profiles.

WK, the Facebook customer whose suspicions helped him avoid being taken, tells me that after my inquiries, Facebook did get back to him and reinstated his profile. One clarification: WK's profile was deactivated not because he reported the scam, but because a scammer hacked into WK's own profile to steal his online identity.

Meantime, Barry Schnitt at Facebook tells me the site is working with law enforcement. "This is a very low-volume attack, affecting a small number of users, but we are concerned about any potential security threat and we're taking this issue very seriously."

He says Facebook is analyzing "the trends of these attacks", and when they find compromised accounts (like WK's), "we disable them and quickly attempt to get them back to their rightful owner." However, the scammer often changes the contact email on the profile. "To combat this," Schnitt says, "we're instituting changes that will better notify users of account changes and empowering them to reverse those changes."

Tips to avoid being scammed by a "friend":

Verify their circumstances ("I'm in London, just got mugged, and need money to fly home") through some other means than the web, like calling them or calling mutual friends.
Use unique credentials for each of your web accounts, so that scammers who find out who you are in one place can't get by on those credentials on another site.
Reset your Facebook password if you suspect your account has been compromised
Have more than one contact email address, so if one is compromised, Facebook can still notify you of changes to your profile.

SCAMS AND TOILET PAPER--YOUR EMAILS

Funny Business Comments:

Reader Gary L., an artist, wrote in after the post on scamming: "I was amazed how sophisticated these online scams can be. I was contacted by a person telling me they saw my artwork online and was interested in purchasing ten artpieces for a hotel project in their country. It was like a magnet to my ego ... lol. What artist would not want to believe this? We all know the scam ... they wanted my bank account to transfer the money. We corresponded with each other. I tried to get his phone number to speak with him. The final email had no phone number, but had the address where to send the artwork. They were in Nigeria. The alarms went off in my head...Eventually they stopped bothering me."

Jeff J. ponders solutions to my post on how Kimberly-Clark's [KMB Loading... () ] CEO says people are buying less toilet paper in this economy: "Thanks for raising the lid on this issue.