Scam artists have a new way of reaching you – through Facebook chat.
Many of us are pretty good at spotting bulk spam messages in our email inbox, but this scam is much more personal.
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It happened to makeup artist Kelly Williams. She was on Facebook when a chat message came in from her cousin. She started to chat with him but then he started talking about how he won a Facebook lottery. Kelly got suspicious and asked him a few personal questions – when he couldn’t answer them, the chatting stopped.
I talked to Satnam Narang, a Security Response Manager at Norton. He says this is a new twist on an old scam. Basically, it’s a numbers game. It is a real person chatting – they’re trying to either get you to click a link that will deliver viruses or malware to your computer, or get you to send some money their way. The account is typically a friend who doesn’t frequent Facebook very often, since they won’t notice that their login has been compromised.
To protect yourself, be on the lookout for a scam like this and watch the links that you click and the personal information you share, even if it seems like someone you trust.
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Here are the screenshots from the chat:
