This is both annoying and embarassing.
My Facebook account was hacked earlier this afternoon and the “charming” hacker has been telling my contacts that I need money – it’s basically a 419 scam.
I’ve already reported the issue to Facebook
To clarify:
- I’m not in London or anywhere else overseas. I’m currently in Carlow
- I haven’t been mugged or had my wallet stolen
- I don’t use Western Union or any such services. If I wanted your money I’d either ask or encourage you to spend more money with us!
Hopefully I’ll be able to get this resolved in a timely fashion.
I suspect my Facebook account password was a bit too weak and was bruteforced..
UPDATE: I’ve finally regained control of the account and will be using much stronger passwords in the future (there’s a blog post or two in that tale!)
From Paul Clerkin:
Damn, I just transferred 100,000 dollars to your account from my account in Lagos
From Barry:
How strong was your password?
From Michele Neylon:
Barry
Not strong enough
Blog post on this to follow …
Michele
From John Braine:
Same thing happened to me last week.
http://www.johnbraine.com/2009/06/facebook-419-scam.html
I’m pretty sure it was a direct result of that email/password leak a while ago. You know the one… was discussed on askaboutmoney etc. It was the database of a computer shop that got hacked.
From Steve Burke:
Michele,
Did facebook tell you it was a brute force? I.E. did they indicate that some tried 100 times to brute force your login?
I’m suprised they dont have a fail2ban type system implemented.
From Michele Neylon:
Steve
Facebook didn’t give me any details, but I suspect it was a weak password.
Michele
From June Caldwell:
Really glad I told you to buggar off to the Irish Embassy instead!!
From Bock the Robber:
So could I have that fifty cents back then?
From JM Rubillon:
For really strong passwords you could always use:
https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm
Uncrackable!