How to stay clear from Phising in Facebook?

Phising is a form of cyber-crime involving tricking a user to give their username and password to websites disguising itself to looks like a legitimate website said user often visit. By getting the username and password of a user, phisers could hijack a user-account and use the hijacked account for their purpose.

The motivation behind phising may vary from collecting as many email address as possible for spamming purpose, using the user account to perform illegal activities, stealing money and defamatory purpose on the account being hijacked. That is why it is in the best interest of any account owners to protect themselves from phising. In the case of FaceBook users, in the worst case a phisers may use your account to sell things such as porn or drugs.

At the moment the latest big-scam running in Facebook is ponbon.im, check 121.im or check 151.im, if you receive email with such link, simply delete the email without clicking the link.

In order to protect yourself from phising, you are advised to do follow these simple steps when browsing:

• Always look at the URL of the web you visit - The URL of the web page you are currently viewing at the moment is always shown in the top part of your web browser. Make sure that not only the web-page is similar to the one you always visit. The URL have to match as well. For FaceBook, the URL always start with http://facebook.com/ .
• Learn a bit about how subdomain are named - Subdomain could be though as smaller website inside a bigger website. The standard name of a subdomain place the subdomain name in front of the domain name. So, if you saw that the URL shown on top of your browser is http://facebook.phising.com/ then you are viewing the http://www.phising.com instead of http://www.facebook.com.
• Do not give your username and password to anyone - Before you enter your username and password, make sure that you are in the right website. Check your URL and make sure that the URL shown on top of your browser is right. Do not rely on how the web-page looks like! Most phisers are smart enough to make their website looks like the website you often visit.
• Learn form previous Phising in Facebook - There are articles in NetworkWorld.com, MSN Tech, Guardian.co.uk and Canada.com about previous phising in FaceBook. It is recommended for you to read them.