Yesterday, I was involved in resolving a face book scam. A friend was contacted via chat on Facebook posing as one their "Facebook Friends" and said they were mugged in London and robbed. (A new form of identity thief) He knew a lot about this individual but did not have his cell number which was also stolen during the mugging.

They asked for $920 to be wired so he could get home. I got a hold of the Real person via Cell phone and between the 5 of us on various phones resolved that Harry is not in London and a scam was averted.

Do not fall for chat room scams, especially if you are not "computer savvy".
Do not fall for "a friend in trouble" until that friend is contacted via phone.
If they say "Western Union" expect a scam.
If it is from another Country, there is little recourse in getting your money back.

Internet user BEWARE!

Thanks for the heads up. It is a shame we who have no natural predators must worry about our own, but we must...

It is a real shame it's these type of tricks that make it hard for the honest ppl..
thanks for sharing that Dennis

Remy

Old scam, arcticle on this over a year ago including all the major networks. See this http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/20/lat......or-cash/ Bottom line, if you think it might be legit, its easy, have them phone you.

That's why more and more people are getting out of Facebook
into other more secure networks. There's too many holes
and FB are scrambling to cover up the regular "bad news" stories.

For instance a lot of magicians and entertainers are now getting involved in
the 434U network. I actually blogged about this today.

send me a PM if you would like more info.

Thanks for the heads up.

I think it's not so much a Facebook issue but a social engineering issue.

Years ago, crooks would actually call a person on the phone, pretending to be from their credit card company saying something along the lines of their networks crashed and had to be restarted. In the process the person's login info was erased and needed to be re-entered. At this point in the story the crook would ask for the person's login credentials.

Many don't fall for it. But you only need one naive person to fall for it and the crook has a new stolen identity.

I don't think it's possible to block 'holes' like this, as it is more a social behavioral thing and not so much a technology gaff.

You can have all the best 1024-bit AES encryption, but if you write your password on a sticky pad on your computer or make it "password", the games's up.

In the end, as Dennis said, if it sounds fishy, it most likely is.

P.S.
I don't see people leaving Facebook. Quite the opposite. According to a recent LA Times story published a few days ago, it has more than 350 million users worldwide.