Has Your Myspace Account Been Phished??

Steps to Prevent Your Password from Being Stolen on Myspace

Penehoff, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Mar 28, 2007 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

You're checking your email and see something that says "Your account is locked for excessive messaging." You begin thinking, "WHAT? I didn't send but maybe 4 or 5 emails last night and maybe posted a couple comments." The problem is that you have been phished, your password was stolen for someone to use for spamming. This is the biggest and most annoying thing to have to deal with while being on Myspace. No worries... we have been on Myspace for close to 2 years and over this time we have learned some things about protecting your Myspace account from phishing.

First, lets go through how you can tell that your Myspace account has been phished. The most obvious way to tell is that you get a email from Myspace saying that your account is locked up. Another way would be nasty emails from pissed off users because you send them a load of crap either by messages or comments. Another way would be to check your 'sent messages' folder. If you see a bunch of messages that you never sent, then yeah, you been phished. Also go in and click "View all Bulletins," then look on the top right and click "Bulletins I Posted." Look and see if there are a bunch of bulletins that you never posted. If you do , then yes, you have been Phished.

Second, now let's discuss prevention. First way to prevent your Myspace password from being stolen is be sure to change your password about every month or so. Also make sure you change it to something you can remember. You don't want to be locked out of your own account because you can't remember the password you set. Another way to prevent phishing is by upgrading your Internet Explorer to Version 7. Internet Explorer 7 has a anti-phishing feature that you can turn on and it prevents people from stealing your password. You can upgrade to Internet explorer 7 by going Here. Upgrading to Windows Vista will also update your Internet Explorer to Version 7. If you are using Firefox you can upgrade Firefox to Version 2.0. Firefox also has anti-phishing options. You can upgrade Firefox by clicking Here.

Now that we have discussed these 2 steps, there's something else we want to bring to everyones attention. Most of the time, the main way that passwords are stolen is when you're on Myspace and your writing emails, posting bulletins, sending comments and upgrading your profile, you may see a page that makes you think that you have to re-enter your user name and password (example in picture for this article ). Well, its a scam page, and you can tell a scam page from an actual log-in page by several ways. One way would be hit the back button on your browser and then refresh your browser. If you go back to what you were doing on Myspace and it doesn't say you have logged out then its a scam page. If it says you have logged out then its a legitimate log-in page and you can log back in. The other way to tell if its a legit login page is to look at the browser address, it will say "http://login.myspace.com/" at the beginning of the url. If it does then its safe to log back in. The safest way to ensure that you don't hand over your log-in information to hackers is to bookmark www.myspace.com in your browser and always log in from your own bookmark rather than any log-in page that comes up unexpectedly on Myspace.

How does one recognize a would-be spammer or a profile that has been phished? Some of them are legitimate profiles that have been hacked, some are profiles created just for spamming. Before adding a new friend request, look over their profile. Look for a location. Most spammers don't even list one. Look for any indication of spam on their profile, such as links to advertisements. Also, many spammers don't bother to personalize a profile, and just leave it with a white background because they know it will be soon deleted anyway. As for the legitimate users who were hacked...and this has happened to many...they may be people who you have spoken to before, or show no indication of being a usual spammer. It might be helpful to send them a message to let them know about it, because they might not even be aware that they were hacked.

Last but not least...what should you do if your profile is inadvertently phished? First thing to do would be to change your password quickly to keep the hacker from accessing your profile again. Check your posted bulletins and delete anything that you did not post. Check your sent messages folder and apologize to the recipients and explain briefly what had happened. You may have to use the copy & paste feature for this task. If you've received complaints about spam comments, you also might want to consider perusing your friends comments and deleting any spam comments left by your hacked profile. You can do this by clicking "View All Comments" and when you see an offensive comment with your picture next to it, there should be a link for "Delete My Comment." You will likely lose some people from your friend list in the wake of this event, but if you notify your friends by bulletin, this may help you save face. Then consider it a lesson learned and vow not to let it happen again.

Hopefully, after this article, everyone can be spam free and armed with the knowledge to avoid Myspace hackers and have much more fun with Myspace.

Published by Penehoff

My name is Riley and I am Originally from Orange Texas but I moved to Tyler Texas to be with My current Girlfriend, Faith. Together we run one of the most Popular Texas Promotion groups. We love rock/metal m... View profile

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Steps to prevention.
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35% of all Myspace users are effected by spam daily.

Has Your Myspace Account Been Phished??

Steps to Prevent Your Password from Being Stolen on Myspace

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