FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Falls Victim to Facebook Scam
In a story that shows nobody is immune to Internet scams, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, temporarily lost control of his Facebook profile when it was taken over by a malicious spam bot.
From the New York Times Bits Blog:
On Thursday at around 10:30 a.m., Mr. Genachowski sent his Facebook friends this puzzling message: “Adam got me started making money with this.” It was followed by a link to a Web page that is no longer active. The message blitz indicated that Mr. Genachowski’s account had been taken over by a malicious program that was using it to send out spam.
As of Thursday afternoon, Mr. Genachowski’s Facebook profile was no longer visible on the site. A Facebook spokesman, Larry Yu, said the company learned of the problem this morning and suspended the account, as it routinely does in such cases. An F.C.C. spokeswoman declined to comment.
While this is not the first time (nor will it be the last time) that an individual has their Facebook account taken over by spam, Mr. Genachowski’s prominence as a victim certainly lends an air of irony to this story. As Facebook points out in its official response, the company takes active steps to protect users from malicious software, but users must also hold themselves accountable. This means not clicking on suspicious links or downloading untrustworthy applications.
To Mr. Genachoswki, and the rest of the Facebook userbase, the company offered this advice.
“You can protect yourself by never clicking on strange links, even if they’ve been sent by friends, and by being wary of sites that ask you to download or upgrade software.
As ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik wrote in a blog post several weeks back, “the future of antivirus is antivirus for your life.” Because of social media, Internet threats have evolved faster than the means for protecting against them. As such, the best way to defend your identity and reputation from the spammers and scammers of the web is to proactively manage your digital life.
