I don’t really get what the big deal is with social web sites like Facebook and Myspace but if it is where the people are, the rest will come. There is an epidemic of social network hacking that I want everyone to be aware of. This is pretty rampant because I have received this hack from many friends and have heard of many others. The simple way to not get hacked is pay attention.
There are two ways you will get hacked: an email is sent to you that is not connected to your account or a message from a friend is sent to you.
Here is how it works, a friend who has had their account hacked sends you a message about a comment they sent you. In the message it says, "click here to read the message" or something of that nature but what happens is Myspace says "you must be logged in to do that." Now if you think about it, you had to be logged in to read the email so you are really already logged in, the link to the message is actually a link to another web site that looks exactly like Myspace. This web site is called a phishing site and it is there to collect your username and password. Now the person who hacked your friends account has now hacked yours and then the same email is sent to all your friends and the cycle goes on.
You can also get hacked by a random spam email in your regular email inbox that says the same thing only it brings you to the same phishing web site.
So how do you stop this from happening! First, if you get an email and you think there is something in Myspace that needs your attention, actually type the web address for Myspace in your web browser. Never click links in email. If you are checking messages after you know you logged in and one of the links requires you to log in again, don’t do it! If this happens, forget about it and don’t try to find out what the message is. Just send a message from that friend asking if they sent a message and if not, they might have been hacked.
I think scams like this are fairly common with Youth because they don’t take the time to think about what they are doing. Just click, click, click, and get to wherever they need to be as quick as possible. It is becoming increasingly important to not trust email from our financial institutions. If you receive notice from your bank that there is a problem, don’t click any links in email, go directly to their web site via your web browser. If there is a problem with your account, they will tell you when you log in.