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NEWS FROM THE LAB - Monday, February 9, 2009
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Social Networking Hack Posted by Patrik @ 16:59 GMT

We recently read an interesting story from MSNBC's "The Red Tape Chronicles" regarding an emerging Social Networking scam.
(There's also video.)

The victim of the scam had his Facebook account hacked. The attacker then targeted his friends by changing the Status message to "BRYAN IS IN URGENT NEED OF HELP!!!". And at least one of his friends fell for it, and wired $1,200 to the hacker.

Discussing this article in our San Jose office, we discovered that one of our employees knew someone that was targeted in the same way. Only, he didn't fall for the scam. We asked for permission to post his chat logs.

"Lisa" is the hacked account. "Bob" is the target.

Here's the conversion:

Facebook 419

Bob's skepticism proved to be invaluable. His next action was to contact Lisa so that she could recover her account access.

We know of many Social Networking sites that are targeted by Phishing. This type of scam could occur on any of them. A healthy amount of caution is very helpful if you wish to fully enjoy your Social Networking experience.

We're curious about our readership. How many of you use Social Network sites?