Important Info if you use Yahoo Messenger
Feb. 22nd, 2006 07:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sestree I found this on a friend's Y!360 blog and am c/p it with her full permission
A particularly effective phishing scam has targeted Yahoo Messenger this week. The reason it is so successful is because the phishing scam involves the Yahoo Messenger user being sent an IM message which appears to come from someone on the user’s Yahoo Messenger buddy list. Ouch.
The message suggests that the user log in to a Yahoo website, which of course isn’t a Yahoo website at all, but looks just like one. Once the user logs in to the fake Yahoo website, the phisher has captured the user’s login details. With those details they can access the user’s Yahoo account, including all of their personal details and the details of all of their contacts.
Said a Yahoo spokesperson, “Hackers have become very devious in their methods to obtain personal information. In this case, the hacker was able to trick the user into providing personal information by disguising their identity to make it appear that the message was coming from a trusted source.”
It was also announced this month that there are worms travelling the Internet which specifically are targetting MSN Messenger.
But if this has you thinking that perhaps you should switch to one of the 3rd-party instant messaging clients as a security measure, look before you leap. It was also announced this week that a security flaw in Trillian has been discovered which allows hackers access to the Trillian user’s computer.
http://www.aunty-spam.com/yahoo-messenger-target-of-effective-phishing-scam
FTR I haven't gotten any IMs in quite a while so I"m safe I think.
A particularly effective phishing scam has targeted Yahoo Messenger this week. The reason it is so successful is because the phishing scam involves the Yahoo Messenger user being sent an IM message which appears to come from someone on the user’s Yahoo Messenger buddy list. Ouch.
The message suggests that the user log in to a Yahoo website, which of course isn’t a Yahoo website at all, but looks just like one. Once the user logs in to the fake Yahoo website, the phisher has captured the user’s login details. With those details they can access the user’s Yahoo account, including all of their personal details and the details of all of their contacts.
Said a Yahoo spokesperson, “Hackers have become very devious in their methods to obtain personal information. In this case, the hacker was able to trick the user into providing personal information by disguising their identity to make it appear that the message was coming from a trusted source.”
It was also announced this month that there are worms travelling the Internet which specifically are targetting MSN Messenger.
But if this has you thinking that perhaps you should switch to one of the 3rd-party instant messaging clients as a security measure, look before you leap. It was also announced this week that a security flaw in Trillian has been discovered which allows hackers access to the Trillian user’s computer.
http://www.aunty-spam.com/yahoo-messenger-target-of-effective-phishing-scam
FTR I haven't gotten any IMs in quite a while so I"m safe I think.
