Julie Schmit-Albin sent along a very important HACKER WARNING last night geared to Facebook users. And it proved timely for me -- this morning the very attack Julie described was attempted on me. Yipes!Here's the deal as Julie described it, "There is a new way to hack your Facebook. A notification will be sent to you that one of your friends has commented on your status, it will open a new page and tell you to re-enter your Facebook user name and password. The page looks just like the FB login page, so be on the look out!"
In my case, there appeared on my Wall (supposedly from a person I know and trust -- but there's the rub, the hacker program hijacks names from your Facebook data base in order to fool you) the following, "lol, you gotta see this!"
Hitting the link got me to the page Julie described and, being forewarned, I recognized it and avoided the trap by NOT DOING ANYTHING except, of course, hitting "Remove" next to the item on my Wall.
Like Julie advised, do your friends a big favor by posting this warning on your Facebook page.
And while I'm at it, let me reiterate my grave disappointment with Facebook's recent changes (this inexplicably dumb division of News Feed and Live Feed) AND with the appalling lack of consideration shown by Facebook bosses to the thousands of complaints about the move.
For if one uses the News Feed format on his Home page, he misses a huge amount of the postings he was receiving before the change. And there seems to be no rhyme or reason about which posts are chosen. Plus they can change on you too. Very weird.
But if one uses the Live Feed format, you get so many posts (including all of the "X Is Now Friends with Y" stuff) that you can't keep up and end up missing another huge amount of the postings you used to receive.
Both from a personal angle (Facebook isn't half the fun, stimulating and helpful experience it was) and the professional angle (the visits to Vital Signs Blog which soared after I started mentioning them on Facebook have dropped considerably), the Facebook changes have proved very counter-productive.
And yet Facebook continues to stick its head in the cyber-sand. Bummer move.
