Here they come. It was bound to happen.
“Facebook is more secure than MySpace,” is the answer I’d always get from people when I ask why they are on one and not the other. This never made sense to me. One feature that MySpace has is you can require every bit of communication be restricted in some way. Facebook has no such restrictions.
Take for example, posting comments on MySpace. I have it set up so only friends can post, they have to fill in a captcha code, they can’t use HTML and I have to approve every comment before it hits my profile. Facebook, on the other hand only allows for the first requirement. Other than that, if you have your wall activated, anything someone wants to post on your wall gets posted and then you get alerted. This has always bugged me since by the time I decide it’s inappropriate, it’s already been up for all to see.
Why is that a big deal? Now, I know what you’re thinking, “No one can hijack a Facebook account. It’s so darned secure and if you trust your friends to not act inappropriately, you’ll be fine.” Wise up people. First, any site that is on the web is open to hackers. Whether they get your info thru clever phishing or ingenious backend trickery, no one is really safe. You have to be as careful using Facebook as any other site. Second, have you met some of my friends? I’m just sayin’.
Regarding the unfortunate issue of having one’s account hijacked, the other day I got a few notices from Facebook saying ‘so and so’ wrote on my wall. Things like; “I got a free laptop” and “Someone has a crush on you”, etc. These came from people who I know were not interested in getting me a new laptop (or ‘lappy’ as the post referred to it) or hooking me up with an anonymous crush. They were hacked and I had to login to delete the posts from my wall.
Now that the reality of the web has shined its ugly light on precious Facebook, please do yourself a favor and follow this simple rule. If you get an email from someone with a link to log on to Facebook (or any site), ignore the link. Take that extra second to open your browser, type in facebook.com and then log in. If the message was legit, you’ll see whatever it was the email was pointing at. If not, well then you just avoided a scam.
In other breaking news: Water is Wet. Fire is Hot.
a friend’s account got hacked last week and posted on a ton of profiles about free ringtones. they also changed his profile pic into an ad. yep, facebook is not secure…
honestly i have hacked both, honestly i think its more fun to hack peoples website and make subtle changes, like their status, and make notes and address it to all friends, like stuff that would not ruin them, but stuff that would freak them out, however facebook is hard to get with phishers but they are both equally not secure, but then again i am not a very good hacker, so…
What do you do if you get hacked? What is the remedy?
Paul … if you get hacked, you should 1) change your password, 2)fix any changes that may have been made to your profile 3)apologize to any friends that may have been spammed and 4) follow the steps described above to avoid phishing scams in the future.