12 February 2021

Facebook Password Harvesting

Your Facebook account is valuable for fraudsters as if they can get access to it, they can get access to all your 'friends'.

Most of us login using an e-mail address and password, and as we often use the same e-mail address and password in multiple places giving it away is a problem elsewhere, not just on Facebook.

And if you have an e-mail address at Hotmail, Gmail etc. then the fraudsters know where to go to try and get at your e-mails - especially if you use the same password there as you do for Facebook - and they can then cause havoc with changing your details all over the place as they will receive the confirmation messages and authorise them via your e-mail account.

A common scam is the Messenger video asking if it's you:

If you click on it, you'll see a screen like this that impersonates the Facebook login screen, although note the URL in this example is 'agilecrm.com' and not Facebook:

If you enter your e-mail address and password, you've just given the fraudsters access to your account (and potentially your e-mail, your bank accounts, PayPal, Amazon, eBay...). It's as easy as that.