Facebook confirms ‘Fakebook’ phishing attacks
A rapidly spreading phishing worm has been hitting Facebook users, looking for usernames and passwords.

Facebook has confirmed reports that it has been targeted by phishing attacks over the past couple of days.
According to reports, messages linking to the websites fbstarter.com or fbaction.net were spreading fast through the social network.
Security firm Websense describes one of the phishing lures in 'fbstarter', which arrives in a user's Facebook inbox or is forwarded to their email inbox if forwarding has been configured.
The message contains a link that redirects the user to a Facebook phishing page imitating the real site's sign-in page.
Once they've entered their username and password, that's enough for an attacker to log into an account and spam a user's friends.
"Remember never to click on links in suspicious emails or messages and to only log in from legitimate pages with the Facebook.com domain," Facebook Security said in a wall post.
"You should make sure that your Facebook password is different from the passwords you use for other online accounts."
Get the ITPro daily newsletter
Sign up today and you will receive a free copy of our Future Focus 2025 report - the leading guidance on AI, cybersecurity and other IT challenges as per 700+ senior executives
Facebook uses MarkMonitor to help protect users against phishing attacks, and recently expanded the deal to help protect against malware attacks.
-
Enterprises face delicate balancing act with data center sustainability goals
News High energy consumption, raw material requirements, and physical space constraints are holding back data center sustainability efforts, according to new research from Seagate.
By Emma Woollacott
-
Cleo attack victim list grows as Hertz confirms customer data stolen
News Hertz has confirmed it suffered a data breach as a result of the Cleo zero-day vulnerability in late 2024, with the car rental giant warning that customer data was stolen.
By Ross Kelly
-
Latest Meta GDPR fine brings 12-month total to more than €1 billion
News Meta was issued with two hefty GDPR fines for “forcing” users to consent to data processing
By Ross Kelly
-
"Unacceptable" data scraping lands Meta a £228m data protection fine
News The much-awaited decision follows the scraping of half a billion users' data and received unanimous approval from EU regulators
By Rory Bathgate
-
Meta notifies around 1 million Facebook users of potential compromise through malicious apps
News The vast majority of apps targeting iOS users appeared to be genuine apps for managing business functions such as advertising and analytics
By Connor Jones
-
Facebook business accounts hijacked by infostealer malware campaign
News Threat actors are using LinkedIn phishing to seize business, ad accounts for financial gain
By Rory Bathgate
-
Meta begins encrypting Facebook URLs, nullifying tracking countermeasures
News The move has made URL stripping impossible but will improve analytics
By Rory Bathgate
-
Meta hit with €17 million fine over multiple GDPR breaches
News The social media giant set aside over €1 billion in November to help it cope with potential fines arising from data protection investigations
By Zach Marzouk
-
Meta says Apple's iOS privacy changes will cost it $10 billion in 2022
News The company's CFO suggests Google "faces a different set of restrictions" because it pays Apple to remain the default iOS search engine
By Bobby Hellard
-
Google, Facebook fined €210 million for making it difficult for users to reject cookies
News Data regulator CNIL gives companies three months to provide a system for refusing cookies that is as easy as single click consent
By Zach Marzouk