There are so many different types of scammers lurking out there in cyberspace looking to con us, but at least we can always trust our faithful friends, right?
Well, not necessarily. While we will naturally place some degree of trust in our friends, it is important to remember that just because they appear to post something, or send us a message, it doesn’t mean it’s actually from them.
We’re all vulnerable to potentially getting our Facebook accounts compromised, some more than others. And when a Facebook account gets compromised, criminals will often target the friends of that account by posing as the owner in a case of social media identity theft.
For example, take the popular “are you in this video?” themed scams where criminals will exploit a compromised Facebook account to send chat messages to friends of that account that contain a link asking the recipient if they appear in a video.
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That link can direct to malicious websites that can either attempt to trick visitors into installing malware, or trick visitors into entering their Facebook login information into a spoof webpage (phishing scam.)
Or take the “friend in crisis” scam, where a compromised account will send messages to friends urgently requesting money, while pretending to be the owner of that account. The idea behind this scam is that friends are likely to send each other money in emergencies. If a scammer posing as the owner of a compromised account can persuade friends of that account that they are in urgent need of money, there’s a good chance they can trick a Facebook user into sending money which is subsequently stolen by the scammer.
Messages that appear to be from friends may be soemthing else.
Even rogue Facebook apps or malware can result in a Facebook account sending messages to friends without the account owners permission or knowledge. Rogue Facebook apps are famous for circulating spammy chat messages using Facebook messages that often lead to malware-laden or spammy marketing websites.
Our point is to demonstrate that we cannot always trust what our friends say on Facebook (or on other social media platforms for that matter) because they may not actually be our friends, rather scammers posing as them. Facebook accounts are being compromised all the time, and those scams we outlined above are real scams being used to trick social media users.
So always be on the lookout for suspicious links, posts or messages on social media. Even if they come from friends. On the Internet, sometimes not everything is as it seems.
