Interesting Phishing Email - Seen This?

[Renegade]

I just got a very interesting phishing email.

The subject was "Hey Ryan", so they got my name right, and the email address was "First Last <crap@yahoo.com>", where the "First Last" is the name a friend of mine uses on Facebook.

The body was a simple phishing link and no more.

I'm not sure how that happened. Some spammer/scammer obviously figured out a way to look at friend relationships on Facebook and send out phishing emails. But there are so many possible vectors there... God only knows how.

Anyone seen this before?

[wraith808]

They could have compromised his yahoo account.  That would account for them having his name and yours.

[Renegade]

^^ Oh, the Yahoo account was just a spam account. It wasn't my friend's account. I should have clarified that.

[wraith808]

Hmmm... maybe something else compromised his contact list?  And this is just that rolling downhill?

[Renegade]

I'm not sure. We both use antivirus, so that's highly unlikely. My guess is that it's some kind of funny business going on with how Facebook shares data.

[anandcoral]

You do not have to hack any one's account to get a list of names and corresponding email address.
Just look at the mails forwarded to you or your friend. The geek in us use 'bcc' but the rest of the world will fill the 'to' with loads of addresses.

We are having festive season 'Durga Puja' and 'Dushera' now in India. I am getting lots of wishes emails and I now have tons of emails to forward 'whatever', if I wish.

Also with so many web accounts been compromised, where do you think those emails end up to.

Regards,

Anand

[Renegade]

You do not have to hack any one's account to get a list of names and corresponding email address.
Just look at the mails forwarded to you or your friend. The geek in us use 'bcc' but the rest of the world will fill the 'to' with loads of addresses.

I know that's not it. Thing is, his name is A B C D, and he uses B D in real life, but uses A C on Facebook, which is what I saw in the phishing email, so I KNOW that it's from Facebook somehow. I'm just not sure HOW that information got collected from Facebook.