Facebook friends don't ask friends for money

To my friends on Facebook:

If you get a message from me asking for money because I've been robbed while on vacation somewhere, please don't send cash.

First off, I can't afford any big vacations for the foreseeable future. Secondly, if I encountered some trouble I definitely wouldn't blast a plea for help out to my hundreds of Facebook friends.

A relatively new Facebook scam has been surfacing in which a user's account is hacked and then used to send messages of alarm to get the user's friends to send money.

Hacking into Web accounts and stealing passwords aren't new. But combining those techniques with the trusted network of friends and acquaintances and broad distribution that the most popular online social network provides is causing some concern.

Colorado Facebook user Donna Lu Gamberg told CBS station KCNC-TV that after refusing to get on Facebook she eventually joined only to have her account stolen by someone who tried to get money out of her friends. "It was a creepy feeling, and that's the first time that kind of incident happened to me," Gamberg said.

Fortunately, Gamberg figured it out and notified Facebook before any friends got duped out of money. But others have not been so lucky.

One Facebook user published a chat he had recently with a supposed Facebook friend in trouble, but which turned out to be an impostor trying to get money.

A Facebook representative told the Inside Facebook blog: "This is a very low volume attack, affecting only a small number of users, but the potential impact to an individual user is high so we're taking it very seriously. Our team has already detected various trends in the accounts of users who have been compromised. We're using this data to quickly surface compromised accounts, ideally before the spammers have gotten very far."

The company advises users to confirm via telephone or e-mail that a friend is truly in trouble before sending money, to use antivirus software, and not to publish information like addresses or telephone numbers.

[jesdon]

Here is my big question of the day, if these hackers have the skills to crack your websites and Facebook accounts and all of that, why don't they take their knowledge and use it to develop their own websites or software and make legitimate money that the FBI won't take away when their house gets raided?

Wouldn't that make more sense? I realize that most of the people doing this are like twelve, but lets face it, the Internet really has no age boundaries, I could enter in a birthdate that makes 55 years old, that doesn't mean I really am, you get what I am saying.

Jesdon
<a href="http://realestatelicensedirect.com" rel="follow">real estate license</a>

[artistjoh]

Although I do not have any information about the Facebook scam as such, similar scams operating of dating sites etc seem to originate in East Africa and Eastern Europe/Russia, all places where setting up a legitimate business is not all that easy. However, you also miss the point that those prepared to make money in morally dubious ways whether drug dealing, prostitution, internet scams etc etc are the sort of people who do not have the same moral compass as most of us and are never going to do anything other than take the easy and no tax route to making money.

I was struck, however, by the irony of someone apparently concerned about people making money immorally while you insert a link to a site which presumably you make money from yet has no relevance to the article or your comment. Is it that I missed your extreme subtlety in trying to provide a common example of someone trying to make money off us poor suckers while having a legally registered web site? Or is it just that You wish to use CNet for advertising your legal web site while not paying CNet for using their site for your promotional tool as other legitimate advertisers do?

[kwilsonjr]

Why can't I tag this article to my Facebook page? You have Digg, Del.iscio.us, Reddit and Yahoo Buzz but no Facebook.

[kwilsonjr]

Never mind. Found it under the 'share' tab.

[Harrison912]

I'm on FaceBook mainly for socially marketing my safety and security web site so I like to know about these sorts of things. My friend's Yahoo account was compromised by this same scam a few months ago but I wasn't aware that they were operating on FaceBook too. Thanks, Elinor, for the information.