It was a day like any other. Max drank his first coffee in the morning and scrolled through his news feed on Facebook. “Does Aunt Helga have something new that she’s upset about?” or “Have I got any new members in my group?” Max thought to himself and wanted to take a look at all of this when he suddenly received a Facebook notification that he was just “mentioned” by someone.

He became curious and wanted to see who was tagging him or where he was mentioned. The mention came from “ Facebook Safety Center .”
WELL BOOM! Max became uneasy because what does the “Facebook Security Center” want from him? “Did I post something wrong?” or “Did I do something illegal on Facebook?” Max thought to himself and carefully clicked on the notification.

Screenshot: Facebook notification of a mention
Screenshot: Facebook notification of a mention

Max clicked on it and was told by the “Facebook Security Center”, which also had the Facebook logo as his profile picture, that his account would be deactivated because a violation of the terms of use had occurred!

He can now avoid this by confirming his account. All he has to do is follow a link that the “Facebook Security Center” has kindly already provided in this post.

Screenshot of the fake status post on Facebook
The alleged Facebook security center left Max with the following information: “Account Security Warnings Your account will be deactivated! Your account was found in violation of the Terms of Service. This will result in your account being deactivated. We attempted to notify you via email, but you did not respond to our message. To avoid being blocked, please verify your account. Please verify your account here: └► http://LINK If you ignore this command, we will permanently close your account and we will not reopen it. Thank you for helping us improve our service. “Facebook™ Security”

Max became unwell

He simply couldn't imagine what community standards he might have violated. But to be on the safe side and avoid an account ban, Max followed the instructions and clicked on the link!

This link led to the Facebook login page and Max entered his username and Facebook password and was then taken straight back to his news feed!

Screenshot of what appears to be Facebook's login page
Screenshot of what appears to be Facebook's login page

Max thought to himself, “OK? That was it? Don’t I have to do anything else?” . With a bad feeling in his stomach, Max continued surfing Facebook and was initially relieved that he could now prevent his account from being blocked.

In the evening…

In the evening Max came home from work and wanted to do another round on Facebook. But Max NO LONGER had ACCESS to his profile!

He thought to himself: “Now what?
Have I been blocked from Facebook after all?” When he logged in, he was repeatedly told that his password was incorrect.

MIMIKAMA

The “Forgot your password?” option was also unsuccessful. Max no longer had access to his account!

What happened here – and why can Max no longer access his Facebook account?

Max was not notified by the “Facebook Security Center”, but rather it was a profile of another user who fell for the same scam as Max himself!

So these are scammers who changed the NAME and PROFILE PICTURE of the account to end up making it look like it is Facebook's “safety center”.

The scammer then made further status posts where she repeatedly mentioned friends from the hacked account's associated friends list, which included Max himself.

The link that Max first clicked on in the status post took Max to a fake website that looked like the Facebook login page.

However, it was a website run by the scammers that was targeting Max's login details! With this data, the fraudsters were able to access Max's private profile and change his password, name and profile picture. In the end, Max also became a new “Facebook security center”.

But not only that!

Max not only had a private profile on Facebook, but was also the administrator and operator of two Facebook pages and a large Facebook group with well over 54,000 members. Max no longer had access to these either!

Tips for Max because he fell for a typical phishing trap

  • Don't click on suspicious links in status posts or Messenger.
  • Only enter your username and password on a website if you are 100% sure that they belong to Facebook. In the current example you can see that the link does NOT lead to Facebook, so it ends with https://www.facebook.com/….

MIMIKAMA

  • Enable “two-factor authentication” for Facebook to prevent third parties from accessing your account.

Note: Max is a fictional character. At this point we would like to show what scams fraudsters use on Facebook, what can happen and what happens to many users.

In line with this topic: 

Facebook: This is why you should set up two-factor authentication!


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )