Warning: new Facebook scams may be bigger lures for parents

I’ve been in the internet for 15 years, worked in data security at Visa, and most recently at Yahoo!, and still I was “phished” by a Yahoo! ID scam a few weeks ago. It was pretty tame stuff. The scammers sent an email with another phishing link to my entire address book, but did not appear to do any other damage before I changed my password.

With all the data we all keep, not to mention the data of our “friends,” it’s best to always stay guarded when tempted to enter your password online.

Here’s the new ones going around, courtesy of Mashable:

The first one contains the message: “OMG!! Guys, you have to see this: This mother went to jail for taking this pic of her son,” with a link to a page that tricks you into sharing the story with your Facebook buddies. Once you’ve done that, the page will take you to a survey designed to take your personal info.

The other scam is also spreading through Facebook status updates. This time the message says, “OMG!! McDonalds might soon shut down because of this, you have to see this,” followed by a link that roughly duplicates the process above.