Facebook launches new tool to fight phishing scams

Facebook has created an email address for people to report phishing scams.

Facebook announced last week that it is making a new attempt to curb the scams. It’s launching a select e-mail address, [email protected], where users can send notices of phishing they’ve seen on the social network.

“By providing Facebook with reports, we can investigate and request for browser blacklisting and site takedowns where appropriate,” Facebook wrote in a blog post last Thursday. “We will then work with our eCrime team to ensure we hold bad actors accountable. Additionally, in some cases, we’ll be able to identify victims, and secure their accounts.”

The social network classifies phishing as “any attempt to acquire personal information, such as username, password, or financial information via impersonation or spoofing.” Over the years, phishing stories have headlined the news as countless people have been affected through various scams.

Partnering with the Anti-Phishing Working Group, Facebook outlined these tips to help users be aware of phishing scams:

• Be suspicious of any email with urgent requests for login or financial information, and remember, unless the email is digitally signed, you can’t be sure it wasn’t forged or “spoofed.”
• Don’t use the links in an email, instant message, or chat to get to any web page if you suspect the message might not be authentic or you don’t trust the sender, instead navigate to the website directly.

As for its efforts to attack phishing, Facebook said that the e-mail address for users is meant to compliment its own internal detection system.

“The internal systems notify our team, so we can gather information on the attack, take the phishing sites offline, and notify users,” Facebook wrote in the blog post. “Affected users will be prompted to change their password and provided education to better protect themselves in the future.”