Dangers of Facebook!! Please Read!

[IndyGunSafety]

One of our pilots got a message from another one of our pilots via facebook. It said:

"Hey man I'm in London and my wallet and cell phone have been stolen. My wife is out flying a trip and I can't get in touch with her. Can you wire me some cash? I can pay you back as soon as I get back to the states."

The other pilot wired the money. IT WAS ALL A SCAM!

As line pilots we all know what it's like to be stuck away from home much less out of the country and have something like this happen.

What sucks is the bad guy KNEW the guy was a pilot, knew his wife was a pilot, and knew both of their status' because of facebook entries. There was other personal info given (Like I said I can't mention it) in the message that really sold the deal! EVEN THE AIRLINE WAS LOOKING FOR THE GUY TO TRY AND HELP HIM! They finally found him AT HOME, ASLEEP!

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU POST! I know that sounds obvious, but TELL YOUR KIDS as well!

 

[MrsGungho]

They had this same thing on the news last week or the week before, One of the news ladies had the basically the same thing happen. She had someone look into a bit before she sent money though and found someone had hacked her facebook account and had all the information they needed on her friends to scam her. As a news reporter, she did a story and Face Book admitted that this is an issue but would not release exact numbers that have been affected.
They suggest everyone change your password, make it a harder password to figure out. Do not send money, even if to a friend. I don't remember what else was said, but we're all smart people here and can figure it out,

 

[Scutter01]

Or use the security features that Facebook inexplicably has turned off by default.

 

[Srtsi4wd]

An idea to help safeguard yourself is to put something up that sounds important but is total BS. Maybe even a couple of things. Your real friends will know its BS but a stranger would not. That way you know that if someone hacks in and uses that BS bit of info, you know its a scam.

Just another reason I do not use those type of sites.

 

[Tommy2Tone]

I would assume that if it is a friend that you would actually send money to, you would have their phone number. Call them up and verify. And if you are going to ask me for money at least you can do it via phone and not facebook.

 

[Bill of Rights]

This is not just facebook, which I do not use. I've gotten emails, which I promptly delete, from "Johnny Nugent". These emails claiming to be from him state that he's in London and lost his wallet in a cab or some such, and that he needs $(amount) to get home, where I supposedly know he will repay me.

Funny thing... I got one of those when Sen. Nugent was being streamed live on the Senate floor, fighting to pass a bill for gun rights in IN.

Blessings,
Bill

 

[IndyGunSafety]

I would assume that if it is a friend that you would actually send money to, you would have their phone number. Call them up and verify. And if you are going to ask me for money at least you can do it via phone and not facebook.

As the story went his cell phone was stolen also... thus the facebook message.

 

[Stove]

This very thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago. Hooked one of my employees that is off to college. He went as far as to check his bank account for a balance, then decided he should try me cell. By that time, I had also gotten a couple of calls at our business, so I was aware of the hacking. I promptly got logged in, changed the password. The deal is the hackers use instant messaging, if they used email I would have gotten notification on my crackberry of any replies. I corrected it myself, then 24 hours later FB deleted my whole account.

 

[misconfig]

Or use the security features that Facebook inexplicably has turned off by default.

 

[Fletch]

Or use the security features that Facebook inexplicably has turned off by default.

Yeah, it seems Facebook is the new Microsoft in this regard.

 

[henktermaat]

I think a huge risk is the smartphones. You may have the facebook privacy features in place, but if you lose your phone, and it's set to log in automatically, you're hosed.

Not counting all of the other problems you could get into if you lose your phone.

 

[Scutter01]

I think a huge risk is the smartphones. You may have the facebook privacy features in place, but if you lose your phone, and it's set to log in automatically, you're hosed.

Not counting all of the other problems you could get into if you lose your phone.

I can remote-wipe my phone. I wouldn't carry a phone or PDA that didn't have either heavy encryption or remote-wipe capability.

 

[henktermaat]

I can remote-wipe my phone. I wouldn't carry a phone or PDA that didn't have either heavy encryption or remote-wipe capability.

Everyone is not you...

 

[level.eleven]

Yeah, it seems Facebook is the new Microsoft in this regard.

Fanboi.

 

[Lucas156]

I can remote-wipe my phone. I wouldn't carry a phone or PDA that didn't have either heavy encryption or remote-wipe capability.

How can one do this? May prove useful

 

[Scutter01]

How can one do this? May prove useful

It depends on the phone. On my Palm Pre, I can either do it through my Palm Profile settings on Palm's website. It also runs linux, so I was able to install an SSH server on it for remote access over the internet. I can just SSH into it and run

rm -rf /

Blackberries on a BES server or phones attached to an Exchange server via EAS can be wiped remotely by your corporate IT administrator.

 

[Indecision]

I plan on deleting my Facebook as soon as I get back to the states. I already deleted my Myspace. I never really use the stuff anyway.

 

[rambone]

The most foolish thing people do is to "update their status" about where they are constantly, or where they will be.

People do creepy things. You don't need them following you around on your nights out. You also don't want people to know when your home is empty.


Regarding the story, if you knew the guy well enough to wire him money... then surely could have asked him a question that only he would have known the answer to. Rather than just sending money at the drop of a hat, at least be cautious and verify that the email is legit.

 

[mrjarrell]

Facebook is no more dangerous than INGO. And it can actually save you when you need saving, as this boy in New York was saved from bad police work.
From the NYTimes

The message on Rodney Bradford’s Facebook page, posted at 11:49 a.m. on Oct. 17, asked where his pancakes were. The words were typed from a computer in his father’s apartment in Harlem.
At the time, the sentence, written in street slang, was just another navel-gazing, cryptic Facebook status update — meaningless to anyone besides Mr. Bradford. But when Mr. Bradford, 19, was arrested the next day as a suspect in a robbery at the Farragut Houses in Brooklyn, where he lives, the words took on greater importance. They became his alibi.
His defense lawyer, Robert Reuland, told a Brooklyn assistant district attorney, Lindsay Gerdes, about the Facebook entry, which was made at the time of the robbery. The district attorney subpoenaed Facebook to verify that the words had been typed from a computer at an apartment at 71 West 118th Street in Manhattan, the home of Mr. Bradford’s father. When that was confirmed, the charges were dropped.
“This is the first case that I’m aware of in which a Facebook update has been used as alibi evidence,” said John G. Browning, a lawyer in Dallas who studies social networking and the law. “We are going to see more of that because of how prevalent social networking has become.”
With more people revealing the details of their lives online, sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are providing evidence in legal battles.

More good comes from Facebook than evil. It keeps families separated by distance together and helps organisations flourish. If I'm not mistaken there's even an INGO Facebook group on there. Guess it's just a front for the evil doers.

 

[Pami]

Regarding the story, if you knew the guy well enough to wire him money... then surely could have asked him a question that only he would have known the answer to. Rather than just sending money at the drop of a hat, at least be cautious and verify that the email is legit.

+1 to this. I had a friend IM me on FB recently with a link to a video he wanted me to watch. Except this friend rarely ever IMs me. So I asked him what kind of libertarian he was. His replies were so genuine and so completely him, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. But I really did wonder if it was really him at first.

PS.. the video was a halloween prank he wanted me to see. lol