Robert Siciliano explains how anyone can lock you out of Facebook by submitting a fake death report and getting your account memorialized. All they need is your username, email, and a fake obituary link from a web search. Facebook's fix so far: a help section and better obituary verification.
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Alright, Gene, thank you. Make sure you're alive online this morning. A disturbing new cyber prank has surfaced on Facebook. Basically, someone can fill out a form and declare a Facebook user dead. Joining us live from Beacon Hill studio, Robert Siciliano, identity theft expert and McAfee consultant. Robert, good morning.
Good morning.
Let's start with the guy who's actually on the receiving end of this, Rusty Foster. He was as surprised as anybody. His line is, did you know that you can report any of your Facebook friends dead and Facebook will lock them out of their account? With no evidence needed. He said he didn't even get a notification on this. It's only when he tried to log in. So is it that easy, and what type of damage could this cause?
It is that easy. Unfortunately, all Facebook needs is a username, an email address, and, uh, the actual URL of the person's page, along with a link to an obituary. So if you do a search for just about anybody's name and then the word obituary, chances are you're gonna find an obituary for a person of that name. The age might not match up and the date of, um, of death might be a year or two ago, but up until now, Facebook has actually accepted that and then memorialized that person's page.
This story has gone viral, so there might be some copycats out there. So if this does happen to you, what do you do?
Well, there isn't a whole lot you can do to prevent it, unfortunately. Uh, but Facebook does have a help section that you respond to them letting them know that your page has been memorialized, and at that point they'll do some investigation, they'll look into it, and what we found at this point is some people have had their page reset within an hour, some days, some weeks, uh, and as, uh, this story gets more attention, Facebook will tighten up on their protocols, but at the same time more and more people, will be— fall victim to this memorialization hoax.
So if they do tighten up, uh, on their protocols, what exactly does that mean for the user?
Well, it means that they're gonna pay much closer attention to the actual obit that was submitted, making sure that the person's age, uh, that the date of the, uh, death coincides with when the actual, uh, memorialization is created. So they're gonna look a lot closer at it, whereas before, you know, somebody could have passed away 3 or 4 years ago, and the age might have been, you know, 70, but the person who's being memorialized could be 30.
Obviously Facebook developing still as a social media website, there's gonna be twists and turns, issues that they come across, but why does it seem as though they're always continuing to have an issue?
You know what it is? When you have a company like that is this big, they have, you know, a billion-plus users, uh, there's gonna be kinks in the system. Uh, you know, it's not Facebook's fault for this happening. It's the hoaxer's, it's the scammer's fault for this happening. Uh, you know, social media, Facebook itself is based on the honor system, and when you have the honor system in place, not everybody is honest.
Last question I got for you here. Any other security threats that Facebook could be facing?
You know, it— a social media like this with, again, a billion-plus users, people need to pay attention to their profile pages. They need to scramble their photos so nobody can use them without their authorization. They need to, you know, tighten up their usernames and passwords, especially the passwords, uppercase, lowercase. Make sure your PC is updated with antivirus, anti-spyware, and a firewall.
All right, Robert Siciliano from our Beacon Hill studios this morning. We certainly appreciate the time. Thanks so much.
