200 Million Facebook users at risk of being robbed of their passwords

LONDON - In the latest phishing scam to hit Facebook, almost 200 million users of the social networking site are at the risk of being robbed of their passwords.

A Facebook spokesman has said that Internet fraudsters have stolen the passwords of a number of members in a successful attack on May 14.

Users were fooled into clicking on links posted from accounts, which had already been hacked.

They were then directed to fake Facebook log-on pages, which requested the visitors, re-enter their usernames and passwords.

And those who obliged fell into the hackers’ trap and lost the keys to their profile.

While it’s not clear how many accounts have been compromised, but Facebook has said that it was working to block those taken over by the hackers and minimise the fallout.

They have deleted all references to the fake domains - which include www.151.im, www.121.im and www.123.im - from the website.

According to Facebook’s security team, the hackers intended to wait until they had collected a large number of details before taking over the accounts to spam other members with adverts for fake pharmaceuticals and other products. (ANI)