Innocuous Facebook email invite could be your door to a phishing scam
Photo by: J / f / photos
A friendly invite in your inbox, coming presumably from a Facebook admirer, could probably be the latest phishing scam trying its luck on you, warn online security experts. Posing as familiar Facebook notification, the scam email proclaims the ardent desire of a Facebook user to be friends with you.
The message is worked in such a manner so as to appear to come from Facebookmail.com, the site’s official email domain. This domain is used by the site to notify users of new events related to it. The alert that members receive when another users adds them as a friend, is one such communication emanating from the domain.
In fact the new scam email imitates this very communiqué. In a familiar message, it informs you that a member of the community wishes to make friends with you. A picture of your secret admirer is attached as a .zip file, the mail informs helpfully.
What a double-click on the attached ‘picture’ file really does is debauchery. It sets off the download of a malicious code called Trojan onto your personal computer. This program watches over your online activity and records all login access codes you submit there. At first opportunity, it transmits the same to waiting fraudsters. In this way, fraudsters get access to any information or funds you kept locked in online accounts.
The email has another honey-trap. It includes a Facebook login form that looks like the real thing. Those who submit their login information here, even though they log on almost normally, inadvertently compromise their accounts as the same information is waylaid enroute by fraudsters as well.
Source: SecurityLabs.websense.com
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