Thursday, April 30, 2009

SCAM WATCH | fbstarter.com Steals Facebook Users' Passwords

Phishers steal personal information

phishingReports have been flooding in about phishing site fbstarter.com. The dummy web site poses as a Facebook login page to get users to type in their usernames and passwords.

We all know that online scams set to steal personal information such as passwords are the first step on the road to identity theft.

Phishers keep changing lure

You may recall just a couple of days ago when fbaction.net pulled exactly the same password-stealing scheme. Therein lies the problem. Facebook blocked fbaction.net and it has blocked fbstarter.com, but these scams were likely conducted by the same people.

That means these phishers are changing their scheme slightly and launching new attacks after one is thwarted.

Could be harmless — or not

The phishing scam is widely reported to be harmless. After all, fbstarter.com doesn’t ask for credit card information or account numbers so fraudsters could take out payday loans in your name. It just takes your user information so it can send annoying fraudulent messages to others that will bring them to fb starter.

However, if you use the same username and password on your Facebook page as you do to login to your bank account or pay your credit card bill, who knows what could happen?

What to watch for

This little scam works like this: You get an e-mail saying that you’ve got a message on Facebook. There’s a link so you can look at it. You click the link and it sends you to the dummy page, fb starter, which looks just like a Facebook login page. You attempt to login and voila, phishers have your password. ... click here to read the rest of the article titled "SCAM WATCH | fbstarter.com Steals Facebook Users' Passwords"

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