Facebook Hack Shows Importance of Internet Security

A recent Facebook scam reported by a few of our members – and countless others, according to news reports and social media accounts – is a good lesson about the importance of two-factor authentication. In two-factor authentication, also called multi-factor authentication, you add an extra layer of security to your accounts by requiring two forms of identification, such as your email address and your mobile phone number.

The Facebook fraud, in which hackers gain control of people’s accounts, shows why it’s so important. Once an account is compromised, the scammers write a Facebook post that says you are selling discounted expensive items, such as a car, on behalf of a seriously ill relative.

The hacker instructs your friends to send a private message if they are interested. He or she will try to get them to send a deposit, even though they haven’t yet seen the item “for sale.”

Such scams have been reported in Georgia, New Jersey, Colorado, and New York, with unsuspecting friends losing thousands of dollars. When our members – one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast – belatedly discovered that their accounts were hacked, they tried to change their passwords. But the hacker was one step ahead of them. The hacker had installed two-factor authentication on their accounts, which they had not enabled themselves. That enabled him to control their accounts because he used his own phone number. So, when the real account owners tried to change their passwords, they were unable to get the authentication codes, because the system sent them to the hacker.

In one case, the hacker deleted a victim’s husband from her list of Facebook friends, making it much easier to conduct the scam undetected. Meanwhile, the hacker was chatting with the victim’s other Facebook friends and asking them to pay for goods via Zelle. One friend, who was about to send the hacker a deposit on a car, finally got suspicious. “Hey,” he wrote, “how do we know each other?” “I’m sorry,” replied the hacker, “but is this not a time to remember things as I’m growing older.”