How To Keep Hackers Out of Your MySpace

    We’ve all seen friend’s Myspace accounts hacked, you’ve probably had your own password stolen at one time. When a person’s Myspace login information is stolen, it is mostly used to post spam bulletins advertising a variety of things. You may have wondered how these hackers get your password, and what you can do to prevent it. This article should help you better understand hacker’s tricks, and how you can protect yourself. Although this article is dealing specially with Myspace, it teaches safe web browsing habits, which you can apply to other websites.

    The main method hackers use to get your email address and password is called phishing. Phishing is where the victim is presented with what looks like the Myspace login screen, such as the one below.

     Looks legit right? It is an exact replica of the real Myspace login, with one important difference: when you enter your email address and password like you normally would, it doesn’t log you in. Instead it sends your login information to the creator of the site. Normally you don’t notice a thing, and you just figure Myspace is messed up, which happens often. Now armed with your email address and password, the hacker can use your Myspace to do what ever he wishes, which is usually to spam your friends so he can hack their accounts as well.

    The hacker often uses a hacked account to post bullions which promises the victim things such as free ring tones, hot girls, or free gift cards. These links often lead to the fake login pages, which many people fall for.

    On this particular phishing site the address bar identifies the website as:

http://login.myspace.com.index.fuseactionlogin.mytokenfxeo315dgad4mz.logmeznmysplace.com/login/

This may seem like the correct URL at first glace, but take note of the words at the end of the URL, “logmeznmysplace”, and the few to many “dots”.

Compare it to an actual login URL:

http://login.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=login.process&MyToken=1bdbda03-6598-4f25-a69b-167898fda3d4

    Now that you know how phishing works, how can you protect yourself? I suggest using a web browser other than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. My favorite being Mozilla Firefox (www.getfirefox.com). Firefox has excellent anti-phishing technology which has saved me numerous times. When I visit the fake Myspace Login page, Firefox immediately tells me something is wrong.

    Hopefully you have learned something from this article. Remember, if you do accidentally give your email and password to a hacker, you can lock them out of your account by simply changing the password.