[Infowarrior] - FCC Chairman Spams Facebook Friends

[Richard Forno]

December 31, 2009, 3:20 pm

Whoops! F.C.C. Chairman Spams Facebook Friends
By BRAD STONE
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/whoops-fcc-chairman-spams-facebook-friends/?hp

Update | 3:27 p.m. Adding statement from Facebook at the end.

Facebook scam artists have closed out 2009 by snagging a prominent  
victim: Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications  
Commission.

On Friday morning at around 10:30 a.m., Mr. Genachowski sent his  
Facebook friends this puzzling message: “Adam got me started making  
money with this.” It was followed by a link to a Web page that is no  
longer active. The messages indicated that Mr. Genachowski’s account  
had been taken over by a malicious program that was using it to send  
out spam.

As of Friday afternoon Mr. Genachowski’s Facebook profile was no  
longer visible on the site. A Facebook spokesman, Larry Yu, said the  
company learned of the problem this morning and suspended the account,  
as it routinely does in such cases. An F.C.C. spokeswoman declined to  
comment.

The chairman is by no means alone in getting inadvertently embroiled  
in social networking scams that can be embarrassing. I wrote about  
such scams earlier this month, noting that the humiliation sown by  
these attacks is usually just a byproduct of spammer efforts to get  
people to click on various links.

It’s not clear how Mr. Genachowski’s Facebook account was compromised;  
perhaps he or a family member clicked on a malicious link, allowing  
his account to be taken over.

The most important question: Who the heck is Adam?

Update: Facebook sent this statement, which indicates that if Mr.  
Genachowski wants to continue to use Facebook, he will have to get  
some education about the safe use of this particular form of  
communication.

We take security very seriously and have devoted significant resources  
towards helping our users protect their accounts.  We’ve developed  
complex automated systems that detect and flag Facebook accounts that  
are likely to be compromised (based on anomalous activity like lots of  
messages sent in a short period of time, or messages with links that  
are known to be bad).  Because Facebook is a closed system, we have a  
tremendous advantage over email.  That is, once we detect a phony  
message, we can delete that message in all inboxes across the site.

We also block malicious links from being shared and work with third  
parties to get phishing and malware sites added to browser blacklists  
or taken down completely.  Users whose accounts have been compromised  
are put through a remediation process, where they must take steps to  
re-secure their account and learn security best practices.  This is  
what happened with Chairman Genachowski’s account.

To combat these threats, however, we need users’ help too.  You can  
protect yourself by never clicking on strange links, even if they’ve  
been sent by friends, and by being wary of sites that ask you to  
download or upgrade software.

We educate people about online security through our Facebook Security  
Page, which has well over one million fans.