Postal Police report a new scam that has social as its protagonist: if you get an email asking you to confirm your Facebook account, delete it
And now it’s Facebook’s turn. Scammers are back in charge and have targeted the world’s most used social platform to try and trick some distracted users. It’s not the first time (and it won’t be the last) that Facebook has become the protagonist of a scam.
Also in this case the strategy used by the hackers is the same. An email is sent to users using an email address very similar to Facebook’s and with the official logos of the US company. In this way if a user is not very careful it may happen that he falls into the trap. This kind of scam has a very precise name: phishing. In the last months more and more cases of phishing have been reported by users and the Postal Police. And also in this case the report was given by the Postal Police via the Facebook account “A life of social”.
How the Facebook scam works
This time the scammers have organized the scam down to the last detail. An email message is sent to users asking them to confirm their account for security reasons. In order to complete the operation it is necessary to send a copy of the identity card and a selfie with the document in hand so that the identity is verified. Once this step is complete you will need to send all the documents attached. It only takes a few seconds to realize that this is a scam: Facebook does not require a selfie to confirm the account. Although it is easy to recognize that it is a scam, there are many users who have fallen into the trap set by hackers in the last few hours.
How to defend yourself from the scam
In many cases you do not need great computer skills to be able to recognize a phishing scam. First of all, you should always pay attention to grammatical errors: in many cases the messages are translated with Google Translate and it is normal that there are syntax errors. Then the email address used seems to be the “official” one, but in reality it varies for subtleties. For example, in this specific case it is “facebookmailcom”. Also, remember to never send your personal information via email, especially if you do not know the person who is asking for it. The goal of the scammers is to get hold of your personal data in order to sell it on the dark web.