Cyber crime has been in existence for as long as the Internet existed. Basically, as soon as people see a new way of conning people, they latch on to it. But, because most of us are used to the threat from phishing emails, and respond accordingly, binning the attempted con immediately, criminals are looking elsewhere for their victims.

There cannot be an Internet-connected person left alive who hasn’t received some form of scam, normally via an email asking for your bank details or trying to persuade you to click on a bogus website. Luckily, most people are now educated and aware enough not to fall for such scams.

This has lead cyber criminals to look elsewhere for their potential targets, and social networks such as Facebook seem to be the new platform for their virtual mugging attempts. The Sydney Morning Herald reports the experience of Karina Wells, who found herself almost fooled by a request from a friend.

On Friday, Wells received a message from a friend on Facebook asking her for $500. This friend was supposedly stranded in Nigeria and needed the money to buy a ticket home. After several messages back and forth, Wells realized not all was as it seems because her friend was using Americanisms such as cellphone rather than mobile.

Realizing she was dealing with someone who had hijacked her friend’s account and was phishing for money and her bank details, she obtained all the details she could about the scammer before passing their details on to Facebook and the authorities.

Wells’ friend likely had his account hacked or inadvertently revealed his login details by way of a computer virus, but once the account was compromised it allowed the scammer to use personal details against the victims friends in an attempt at gaining their trust and persuading them to hand over money.

And Facebook can be used by scammers in other ways too. A simple and seemingly innocuous message can be sent to a list of friends containing a link or video which when clicked on takes the user to a dodgy website. And Facebook isn’t alone, with MySpace users absolutely bombarded with spam emails and phishing attempts.

Criminals, including those of the cyber variety, will always try and stay one step ahead of the law and law-abiding citizens knowledge of criminal activity. With less and less of us being caught out by email, and spam catching software becoming more intelligent, those nice Nigerian con artists have migrated to social networks. I wonder how many friends they have?

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 12:23 am under Crime, Internet, Opinion, Social Media, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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