Facebook Tip; Keep Your Friends Close And The "Others" Far Away

Who can you trust?

Usually if a Facebook user is in your friends list, the likelihood of it being a scammer is very low.  There have been instances of hacked user accounts, but usually this is done by someone who knows the user and may be playing a trick on them. We hope.

The issue  now is someone or 'ones' is creating fake Facebook accounts and using them to distribute malware.  This is usually done with a link to a video. Normally you get a pop-up that tells you to download additional software to view the video.  Wala, you just downloaded malware that can completely take over your computer or render it nearly useless.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said, “We’re working to identify the handful of fake accounts that were created and disable them.  The URL contained in the profiles has already been blacklisted by the major web browsers and blocked from being shared on Facebook.  We use an outside captcha company called reCAPTCHA (http://recaptcha.net), which was recently acquired by Google and is a very well-regarded captcha provider.

To beat hackers, do at least these three things;

•  MAKE SURE YOUR PASSWORD is at least 8 - alpha and numeric characters in length and does not spell anything, and/or contain a sequence of numbers or letters.

•  NEVER accept friend requests from people you don't know.  Some people try to get as many 'friends' as they can, but the downside could be getting your account hacked.

•  NEVER OPEN or authorize your computer/program to open any file that you ARE NOT CERTAIN IS SAFE.  If a web page asks you to download something to view their page, it probably is not a kosher request.

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