Fraudster jailed after pillaging Facebook accounts for personal information

A British man stole £35,000 (approximately US$ 55,000) from his neighbours’ bank accounts after determining their passwords via personal information they posted on Facebook.

Fortunately, there’s some advice which the rest of us (and indeed online banks) might take away from the story to make all of us more secure in future.

According to a Daily Telegraph report, 33-year-old Iain Wood, of Newcastle, befriended people living in his apartment block, and used their personal details to get past online bank security checks.

Wood would attempt to log into his victims’ bank accounts, and click the button to claim he had forgotten his password.

Using clues gleaned from Facebook and Friends Reunited, he would attempt to help answer security questions such as memorable dates, name of their…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.