Thursday, July 16, 2009

Phishin' and coming up empty.

Phishin' and coming up empty.

So yesterday some jerk took over my friend Jose's account and tried to lure me in with this Facebook phishing scam. Here's how it went down.

11:14am Jose
hey

11:14am Jim
hey jose, what's up?

11:15am Jose
not too good

11:15am Jim
what's wrong?

11:16am Jose
i'm stranded in London
got mugged at gun point last night
all cash,credit card and phone was stolen

11:16am Jim
yikes! still have your passport at least?

11:17am Jose
yes
my return flight leaves in few hours but having troubles sorting out the hotel bills

11:18am Jim
really? how did you phish into jose's account?

The worst part? Facebook seems to be uninteretsed in either dealing with this particular scam or are doing so in a completely opaque manner.

The obvious moral of the story is BE CAREFUL. Utilize Snopes and search Google for scams if anyone asks you for money / passwords / ANYTHING WEIRD (and even the not-so weird). Just because someone looks like your friend on the internet doesn't mean it actually IS your friend!

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