PandaLabs reveals password-stealing fake Facebook pages

The fake Facebook page appears to operate in a similar manner to early phishing email landing pages, Infosecurity notes, and is designed to appear to be a regular logon page, but capture people's username and password.

According to PandaLabs, the URL and content of the web page is similar to those of the real service, meaning that Facebook members that reach the fake Facebook page could easily be tricked into entering their username and password.

If they do so, the IT security vendor said that the fake Facebook page returns an error, which should help alert users to the fact that this is a malicious site.

Luis Corrons, PandaLabs' technical director, said that any data entered in this fake Facebook web page will end up in the hands of its creators.

"This fraudulent URL is probably being spread around through emails and through BlackHat search engine optimisation techniques", he said.

"In any event, once cybercrooks have the user's details, they can take any action from the account including publishing spam comments with malicious links and sending messages to contacts", he added.

To avoid scams like this, Panda recommends that users do not reply to or follow links included in unsolicited emails.

Users should carefully check that the URL they are entering, is really that of the site they want to access and that the web URL is spelt correctly.

If they have entered data on one of these pages, they should quickly go to 'your account' and change the password, to prevent anyone from accessing it, PandaLabs said.

Finally if users cannot access their Facebbok account, it's important to remember that Facebook offers services through which ownership of the account can be reclaimed.

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