Earlier in the year, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reported that scamming had arrived at Facebook.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a Facebook message from LifeChurch Internet Pastor, Brandon Donaldson. Brandon works in video (like this one) a lot. And since we were working on LifeShare at the time and the message indicated that he wanted to share a video with me, I clicked on it. Oops! What I got was not from Brandon. When I let him know he told me that he was already aware that his Facebook profile had been compromised.
Chris Fobes, author of the ebook Facebook for Pastors, also knows of a ministry leader whose Facebook profile was compromised. Again, an unknowing leader sent out embarrassing spam messages to his Facebook friends list. So, Chris put out the following message:
Facebook has been hit with attacks by spammers a little more lately. But don’t worry, with a little education, you can protect yourself and enjoy all the best of Facebook for ministry purposes.
Here’s what happened to cause the situation. The pastor received a note from one the his Facebook friends that said something like: “I saw this video with you in it”. Since pastors often travel and speak in various churches and other venues, he curiously clicked on the link.
Instead of seeing a video, he found himself at what appeared to be the Facebook login page. He assumed he was somehow logged off and used his user name and password to log back in.
Had he looked closer he would have realized he had given his name and password to a “Phishing site.” Learn more about Phishing on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing
To remedy the situation, my friend had to change his password by logging into the real Facebook page.
There is a group: “Facebook Phishing Scam Awareness” with tips for what to do if this happens to you. Here are a couple immediate helps:
- HOW TO RECOVER: If you think you have had your account compromised, immediately change your Facebook password at https://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php Also, report the scam to Facebook by sending an e-mail to privacy@facebook.com.
- HOW TO AVOID BEING SCAMMED: Before entering any sensitive information like user names or passwords, make sure you are on Facebook.com and not a similar, but different domain.
- HOW TO RECOGNIZE A PHISHING WEBSITE: It is easy to make a domain name look legitimate when it is fraudulent. The only part of a domain name that is unique to the owner is the part immediately before the .com or .org, etc. So anything that ends with Facebook (like ilstu.facebook.com, or photos-d.ak.facebook.com) with no single forward slash (/) to the left of it, is legitimately Facebook.
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Cynthia,
Thanks for the info. As always, very helpful stuff.
Peter
Peter glad this is a helpful post. So great to get to see you irl at the recent Church TechCamp. Please give my regards to those who couldn’t make it (ie, Dave).
Yes very helpful piece of information. Thank you and by the way I found your site whilst doing a little surfing and so far I find it very informative, I have bookmarked and will come back frequently, so keep up the good work.
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