Beware of Facebook Identity theft

Parent Cafe
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<p>Unfortunately, this article doesn’t say how his account was hacked.
The one way that I’m aware of occurs when you get a wall posting from a FB friend who says your picture is on some website. When you go to that website, it asks you to sign in with your FB id. Clearly, do not do that!</p>

<p>“Bryan Rutberg’s daughter was among the first to notice something odd about her dad’s Facebook page.
At about 8 p.m. on Jan. 21, she ran into his bedroom and asked why he’d changed his status to: “BRYAN IS IN URGENT NEED OF HELP!!!”</p>

<p>Rutberg initially thought little of it, and lay down for an after-dinner nap. But an hour later, when his wife woke him to ask what was wrong, he took a second look and realized his Facebook account had been hacked. Within minutes, his cell phone was ringing non-stop, with concerned friends calling to offer help. Many had received an e-mail with the story that Rutberg had been robbed at gunpoint while traveling in the United Kingdom, and needed money to get home. One even sent $1,200 to a Western Union branch in London.</p>

<p>The Seattle resident and Microsoft employee then spent the next 24 hours in a frantic search for a way to contact Facebook and stop the hackers. But he was locked out of his own account and locked into a Catch-22; criminals had changed his login credentials so he couldn’t access his own Facebook page. That meant he couldn’t remove the dire status message. He tried to use his wife’s account to put a message on his “wall” indicating he was fine, but the scammer had “de-friended,” his wife, so that didn’t work. And he had no outside-of-Facebook way to contact many of his friends. Before he succeeded in getting his account deactivated, a friend’s impulsive generosity had cost him big-time, and Rutberg was left wondering how carefully Facebook protects its users from these kinds of crimes…"
[Facebook</a> ID theft targets ‘friends’ - The Red Tape Chronicles - MSNBC.com](<a href=“http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/01/post-1.html#posts]Facebook”>http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/01/post-1.html#posts)</p>

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<p>timely, I just got an email yesterday:</p>

<p>Tom sent you a message.</p>

<p>To read or reply to the full message, go to MySpace: </p>

<p>and there was a link that took me to a Myspace signin page. The URL actually looked good.</p>

<p>I opened a new browser and checked my own page and there were no messages. So I forwarded the email to <a href="mailto:spoof@myspace.com">spoof@myspace.com</a> which may not be a valid address.</p>

<p>Interesting, when I got this spoof email I wondered what a scammer could even do with my facebook account if he gained access. That is a pretty imaginative scam!</p>

<p>I am so confused! I don’t think I even have a myspace account… I have a facebook account.</p>

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<p>facebook has been hacked in a number of ways. People shouldn’t consider it a highly secure site and should avoid putting information there that they’d be concerned about others accessing. One can google ‘facebook hacked’ and find many articles about it.</p>