Outline:
Message purporting to be from Facebook Security Management claims that your account will be disabled because other users have reported your actions. It instructs you to click a link to re-confirm your details or Facebook will remove your account.
Brief Analysis:
The message is not an official Facebook security warning. Instead, it is a phishing scam designed to steal your Facebook login details as well as your credit card numbers, your email account password, and other identifying information. It is just one in a long line of very similar scam messages. If you receive one of these messages, do not click on any links that it contains.
Example:
WARNING: Your account will be disabled!
Our system has received the reports from the other users about the misuse of your account. Someone has reported your actions, which violations of our terms.
Facebook does not allow:
• Pretending to be someone else
• Interfere with another comfort for the user
• Having more than one Facebook
• Share link or video content with pornographic videos
If you are really user of this account, you’ll need to re-confirm your account. It’s easy, Click the link below to confirm your account:
If you do not immediately confirm a grace period of 12 hours after you receive this message, so sorry we will remove of your account.
Thanks,
Miller
Security Management
Facebook
Detailed Analysis:
According to this warning message, which claims to be from “Miller” at “Security Management Facebook”, your Facebook account is set to be disabled. Supposedly, you have been misusing your account and someone has therefore reported your actions.
The message then claims that you must click a link to re-confirm your account within 12 hours or Facebook will remove the offending account. The warning is distributed via Facebook’s internal messaging system.
However, the message is certainly not from any official security manager at Facebook. And the claim that your account will be disabled if you do not confirm your information is a lie.
If you are taken in by the ruse and click the link in the hope of saving your account, you will be taken to a fraudulent webpage that has been built to emulate the real Facebook website. The fake webpage asks you to “login” with your Facebook email address and password. Next, a second form will appear that asks you to provide your webmail address and password as well as your date of birth, country, phone number, and account security question:
Finally, you will be redirected to the Facebook Newsroom website. At this point, you may believe that you have successfully confirmed your information and thereby avoided the threatened account removal.
In reality, however, online criminals now have a good deal of your personal and financial information. They can use your information to hijack both your Facebook account and email account. Once they have gained entry to these accounts, they can use them to send out further scam and spam messages. They may send new versions of the above scam to your friends from your Facebook account via private messages.
The criminals can also use your credit card to conduct fraudulent transactions. They may also manage to use all of the personal information they have collected to steal your identity.
This criminal tactic is not new. In fact, this scam message is just one in a long line of very similar scams that have targeted Facebook users for several years. Be wary of any message that purports to be from Facebook and claims that your account will be disabled or suspended if you do not click a link to verify your account details. If Facebook needs you to address an account issue, you will most likely receive a notification from within Facebook itself when you login.
If one of these scam messages comes your way, do not click any links that it contains. Always login to Facebook by entering the address into your browser’s address bar or via a trusted app.
