I posted this on my regular blog site this morning, but I feel it is absolutely necessary to post here on my real estate site because this is happening to people everywhere, and you do not want to be a victim.
Yesterday I woke up to find three urgent messages in my personal email inbox all purporting to be from a friend of mine with a business here in Spring Hill, Florida.
All 3 were identical and asked me to reply to the email to send money because my friend was in London and had lost her wallet, her credit cards, and her cash.
All I needed to do was to reply to know where to send the money. The problem is for the hackers is that I had seen my friend at about 1130AM on Friday and I knew she was not in London.
Most of are probably aware this is a scam that has had publicity before. I immediately sent my friend an email and told her I had gotten these emails and that her Facebook account was hacked. The problem is the emails went to the hacker. They now had control of her email account.
I finally reached her by telephone and she was very distressed. She had over 1000 names in her email contact list and everyone was receiving these emails.
While we were on the phone I saw she was in my chat box, so I told her she was online. Wrong, Carole, these were the hackers trying to send even more messages to anyone with an open chat box to send money.
I decided to chat with them. At first they were very excited, they thought they had a believer. When that happened I blasted them calling them every bad name I knew and having worked in the ER in my career, I know a lot of them. It got nasty of course and I photographed the entire chat exchange.
At the end they said “America is now poor. China will chain your asses.” Nice, huh?
This devastated my friend because she has over 1000 people receiving fraudulent emails from some jerks pretending to be her. Her entire business was compromised and she now needs to do some major damage control.
Facebook let’s us down. There are 13 year old hackers getting into people’s Facebook accounts. I had my own phishing attempt last week on Facebook by people using the Facebook logo to send me a Facebook message in my notification box. I wasn’t fooled. I know when Facebook wants to put a message out, they do so by posting it at the top of your wall and usually in pink.
When I investigated this phishing attempt through the Facebook help category, they had addressed it but only as warning to disregard a chain email going around stating “Your account will be closed unless you let us know that this is an active account. People have been complaining about Facebook running too slow, so we are closing accounts not being used.”
Facebook makes it so difficult to report a violation. You have to know to got to the help section to look for it. Personally I think it should be on the main page with a link.
The message that showed up in my notification box read “Your Facebook account is going to be closed”. That will get your attention. That’s phishing and that needs to be addressed by Facebook. They have left a wide open hole in their web site that allows all of us to be under what I call Hack Attack.
Here is what I think Facebook should do for its users. When you sign up, they could say that they suggest you open a free email account to use as your sign in to Facebook. You should never use your personal email account, you should NEVER use your business account. This email account should be for Facebook only.
Next should come a huge warning that your password should be chosen to that account only. It should never be the one you use for banking, bill paying, to order things on-line – never. Your password should be tied into that free email account and you should choose 2-3 and change them every 30 days.
If you were hacked into the hackers would get nothing but Facebook as a contact and your life would not be seriously damaged.
This is a hard lesson for my friend to have to learn and I hope everyone who reads this will pass it on because you could be next.
We also need Facebook to tell people about protecting yourself more than they do. My friend may lose business over this, cash she needs, and Facebook isn’t going to send her a check to cover her losses or yours.
Protect yourself and it’s time to let Facebook know we need their support!
Carole L. Sanek, Licensed Florida Realtor
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