MySpace Scams

They’ve become some of the most looked at websites on the Internet.

These are social networking sites like myspace and facebook, and they’ve become very popular with scam artists.

They could be logging onto your page next.

“I felt livid,” cyber victim Atlantis Bohlen said. “I was angry. I felt like someone came into my space.”

That’s how Bohlen felt when someone hijacked her myspace page.

They somehow grabbed her password and sent mass mailings to her Internet friends.

“You would think the other person would be vulnerable because they care about you and they might be willing to help you,” Bohlen said.

Atlantis is talking about the latest scam on the net, people stealing your identity from myspace or facebook and then hitting up the contacts for money.

“Really, your user name and password, and simply those two pieces of information just allows the cyber criminal access to your circle of friends, your direct connections and from there the sky’s the limit,” Jeff Debrosse with E-Set said.

Debrosse, with the network security company E-Set says the goal of scam artists is to push your emotional buttons.

“The online criminals are really another title you can actually give them is armchair psychologists,” Debrosse said.

Whether it’s over the phone or online, they will find a way to get you to set aside your better judgment.

The problem is, you don’t have any idea who’s behind these emails.

You think it’s a friend?

It could be a bad guy a half a world away.

“So, they spend a significant amount of time trying to come up with new ways to hit that emotional trigger to get you to let go of your money,” Debrosse said.

If scammers are using your name and password to pull off the trick, it’s something you don’t forget.

“It scared me a little bit, kind of creeped me out to think what could happen,” Bohlen said.

So, how do you avoid being a victim?

Make sure to change your passwords, make it difficult for bad guys to break into your site, and if you get an email from a friend asking for money, check it out.

Don’t let emotion cloud your better judgment.

Jesse Clay Scott, 33, of Seguin, Texas, is just the latest of about 30 convicted sex offenders arrested to date by the Texas Attorney General’s Fugitive and Cyber Crimes units for allegedly accessing MySpace in violation of parole conditions. Four others were arrested for allegedly using the social-networking site to meet and sexually proposition undercover agents posing as minors under the age of 15, the Texas Attorney General’s office said in a statement and videotaped news conference.

Scott, arrested last week, allegedly used both his home computer and cell phone to access his MySpace account. He was paroled in 2008 after serving five and a half years in prison for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl, the statement said.

A MySpace representative said the News Corp.-owned social network is doing everything it can to keep sex offenders off the site.

“The safety and security of our users is a top priority for MySpace. We have removed and preserved the MySpace profile of this offender,” Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace chief security officer, said in a statement. “We employ a best of breed solution that we continue to improve on an ongoing basis in an ever changing environment. We hope that the remaining 29 states, including Texas, quickly pass e-mail registration legislation so that offenders can be punished for providing false information online.”

The arrest announcement comes one day after MySpace handed over the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders found on its site to the Connecticut Attorney General’s office, which had subpoenaed the social-networking site last month for the data.

Sentinel, the technology provider MySpace uses to find sex offenders on its site, accused Facebook this week of having 9,000 registered sex offenders on its site in what looks on the surface to be a ploy to drum up business.

The use of social networks by sex offenders has become a hot topic. Attorneys general claim the sites are not kid-safe if so many registered sex offenders are on there, while a recent report finds that those concerns may be overblown.