Facebook Fights Phishing with Crowdsourcing Effort

One of the worst possible things that could happen to Facebook would be if it became overrun with phishing scams. Users would start jumping ship in droves. Of course, Facebook users are certainly no strangers to phishing--they’ve seen everything from fake screens asking for your login credentials to baited “Hey bro, i’m in london and need money, can u help me out?” messages--but the busy bees running the social network have done a rather remarkable job of fending off too much of the stuff.


Classic Facebook phishing: A fake page for stealing login credentials where anything the user enter will redirect to the page they're trying to reach (Image credit: webroot)

Facebook is taking another step in the war on phishing by asking users who spot an offense to send a message to phish@fb.com. The hope is that by asking alert users to essentially call the Facebook cops and report any untoward activity so the eCrime team (yeah, that’s really what it’s called) can investigate and track down offenders.

In a post announcing the new reporting system, Facebook also noted that any users who believe their accounts have been compromised can visit www.facebook.com/hacked for assistance.