The 'I've Been Mugged In London' Facebook scam
submitted by markodonoghue on 18 August 2009
Scammers are using Facebook profiles to try and gain money from users around the world.
These fraudsters are hacking into people's accounts and messaging their friends claiming to have been "mugged in London".
They appear to be very desperate for money and try to draw the user's friends into an online conversation, ending with a plea for funds.
Below shows how they take personal information from hacked pages to make their pose more believable .
The scammer is a man called Matt tells a Facebook friend : "I have the money in my checking account, I can't just access it from here. This (is) really me - Lauren (Matt's wife) is here with me and my kids."
When the friend questions his identity the hacker blocks him, so he can't post a warning for everyone to see on Matt's homepage.
This scam is most common in the US and Australia but an Ireland based blogger has also said how his account was hacked.
John Braine said : "While I was scrambling around trying to find the best way of reporting it, the 'other me' was busy chatting to all my Facebook friends telling them that I'd been mugged at gunpoint in London and I was completely freaked and needed money to pay for my hotel and a flight home.
"One friend said the scammer got quite aggressive when she asked him how I/he knew her."
A Facebook spokeswoman said: “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.”
She said that when Facebook analysts find compromised accounts they disable them and try to get them back to their owner.
Often the scammer has added a new contact email to keep control of the account, so Facebook is introducing changes to better alert users when their account is modified.
It just shows that if you're not aware and the hacker is very smart pulling off this very sneaky scam, then you could be in for a shock in the funds department, depending how much you throw down the drain as it were.
Submitted by:
Mark O'Donoghue
Associated Links:
http://bit.ly/16MHFV
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