The Hacker Door Facebook security scare

A warning being sent across Facebook is scaring users into believing that their accounts have been hacked.

Here is a typical example of a warning message:

To all of my friends: COPY & PASTE: New problem found…. Hacker in door in our friends list!….We are now listed as friends of ourselves! You need to delete yourself from your friends list to close the door to hackers. To do this … Go to Account, go to edit friends, there search for your name on the list and click the X to get your name removed.

The problem with this warning is that it’s complete poppycock, and causing some users to panic that they could have been hacked.

Yes, there is a bug that means that when you search through your Facebook friends list, you show up yourself as one of your friends. And yes, even if you try and “delete” yourself as a friend you’ll pop up again when you refresh the webpage.

But this is not evidence that your account has been…

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, or drop him an email.