1.HACKERS ARE BITCHES
There's a disturbing and annoying new trend that is becoming fairly rampant on MySpace these days, and that trend is Bulletin spamming through profile hacking.
The term "hacking" refers to a certain collection of low-life scum out in cyberspace deceiving you in one way or another, in such a way that you unwittingly give up your email and profile password to them. Once they have your details, they can then log into your account and start posting SPAM bulletin posts from your account with headlines such as the following I have received lately from some of my friends:
"Funny New Video" or
"hot new pic/cam related myspace site!" or even something like
"HOTTEST NEW FREE RING TONES!"
It's basically stupid stuff being advertised that you will easily be able to recognise, generally because the content will be VERY out of character in regards to what that "friend" normally posts.
It's annoying I know... and the only way really to combat the problem is through education - hence why I am writing this to explain to everyone how the hacking can potentially occur, how you can protect yourself from being hacked and what you need to do to stop hackers from accessing your account and using it to spread SPAM bulletins to all your listed friends.
2.How Can You Prevent Yourself
From Being Hacked?
If you look carefully at the MySpace mirror (replication/imitation) site you are linked to (see above screen shot), you will note that the page URL is nothing like what you would see if it was a genuine MySpace page. The "myspace.com" domain doesn't even feature at all. This is a unmistakable marker that you are in the process
For those of you who made the recent upgrade to Firefox 2.0, you should never run into this problem as the browser has an excellent "phishing" warning system built in tha
t will warn you that something is not right about the page you have arrived on. Here's an example graphic of how my browser caught the bogus MySpace login page mentioned above before I had any chance of submitting my details.
3. How To Beat The Hackers
So you're pretty sure you've already fallen victim to a hacker?
Well the solution is actually pretty simple.
access your profile anymore and therefore can't send out anymore
crappy bulletins. All you need to do is get into your Account
Settings and:
A) change your password to
something new - something contains greater than 6 characters and
features a mixture of both letters and numbers
B) change your password AND the
email address you use as your login. This will only be a viable
option for those of you who have a secondary address that you
regularly use.
Changing all these details around will effectively block the
hackers from getting into your account ever again.
Finally, you may not feel that being hacked is that big a
deal? Well let me tell you it is! At the moment the hackers may
only be accessing your account to post crappy bulletins, but the
potential for damage that they could cause using your login is
unlimited. Take these possible applications for example:
- Posting pornographic images in your pictures area
- Leaving abusive comments on the profiles of your friends
- Conducting unsavory posting activity within the "Forum"
or "Group" areas that could result in your profile being
suspended.
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