Social media users 'must learn to spot scams'

Facebook has advised users to report any suspicious activity to the security team after several people came across the '419 scam'.

Social media site Facebook has told users they should 'become a fan' of the company's security page to help identifier scammers.

The advice from Alok Meghrajani, a software engineer on the site integrity team, writing on Facebook's official blog, comes in response to people falling victim to something known as the 419 scam.

In this situation, he stated that user accounts are hacked and the scammer then asks friends to send money through Western Union because they are stranded in a foreign country.

Mr Meghrajani pointed out that the best way of protecting users of the site from this kind of fraud is for people to become a fan of the Facebook Security Page and report suspicious activity to them.

He added: "While only a small number of people have experienced this type of scam on Facebook, we are committed to constantly improving our systems and implementing additional measures to better respond."

Recently, the social networking site announced that it would be making revisions to its privacy policy following advice from the Canadian privacy commissioner about the nature of information that the company stores.

01/10/2009