Article by George Norman

On 13 Oct 2009

How do you thing Facebook handles something like money scams? A typical money scam on Facebook goes something like this: the account of a specific user is compromised (someone with malicious intent beaks into the account) and is then used to send messages that request money. Gullible Facebook users fall for this scam and respond by sending money to the account specified in the message.

Seeing as October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month in the US of A, the topic of Facebook and money scams deserves out full attention. Software Engineer on the Site Integrity Team with Facebook, Alok Menghrajani, explained that security comes as a top priority at Facebook. Consequently there are teams of people across the company that focus on keeping all 300 million user accounts protected from cybercrime.


“Recently we have noticed an increase in scams where people's login information is collected through phishing sites and then their accounts are accessed without permission to ask friends for money,” said Alok Menghrajani. “While the total number of people who have been impacted is small, we take any threat to security seriously and are redoubling our efforts to combat the scam.”

To combat this scam (usually known as a 419 scam), Facebook has published the full transcript of a real chat conversation between a Facebook user and a scammer the Facebook Security Page, it has collaborated with Western Union to help educate people about this type of scam, and it has improved several automated systems in order to better handle this type of scam.

“At the same time, our security team is working with law enforcement and collaborating with email providers and other industry experts to identify and catch the criminals responsible. Western Union also is working closely with law enforcement on scams such as this one. While only a small number of people have experienced this type of scam on Facebook, we are committed to constantly improving our systems and implementing additional measures to better respond,” added Alok Menghrajani

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Tags: Facebook, Social Networking, Money scams, Security, 419 scams

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