Victims are told that they've violated terms of service

Mar 4, 2013 21:01 GMT  ·  By

Would you hand over your personal information in response to an email received from Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Facebook? What if the emails came from Mark Zurckerberg?

Some cybercriminals hope that you will hand over your details, so they’ve started sending out bogus emails in which recipients are informed that their accounts might be suspended for terms of service violations. However, the scammers haven’t bothered to make sure that the name of Facebook’s founder is written correctly.

Here’s what the emails identified by Hoax Slayer look like:

“Mark Zurckerberg

Dear Facebook user, After reviewing your page activity, it was determined that you were in violation of our Terms of service.Your account might be permanently suspended.

If you think this is a mistake,please verify your account on the link below.This would indicate that your Page does not have a violation on our Terms of Service.

We will immediately review your account activity,and we will notify you again via email. Verify your account at the link below: [link]”

Of course, the emails have nothing to do with Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg. Those who fall for it and click on the link are taken to a bogus Facebook login page where they’re asked to log on to their accounts.

By entering their credentials, internauts are actually providing cybercrooks with their usernames and passwords, information which they can monetize in several ways.

In order to avoid falling victim to such scams, check if you’re on facebook.com and not another suspicious-looking domain before logging in to your account.

If you’ve just realized that you’re a victim of this scam, change your password immediately, before the crooks get the chance to abuse your account. Also, if you want to make sure hackers can’t access your account even if they’ve stolen your password, you can enable two-factor authentication.