By Alec Go
The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) has warned the public against possible phishing from registering into a site being tagged as the new version of social media platform Friendster.
In an advisory, the DICT said the Philippine National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-PH) found that the website “is possibly used for phishing.”
“The “new” Friendster appears to be a legitimate website but upon initial investigation, the current IP address hosting the website (23.106.120.84) had previous reports about phishing, brute force and DDoS attacks, hacking, and host exploitations,” it said.
“The link provided in the post uses a non-popular top-level domain (.click). Also, it does not include an “About Us” page which could tell who developed the website,” it added.
It also noted that WordPress, the platform used by the site, is not “used for social networking platforms since it is a content management system.”
CERT-PH advises the public to avoid clicking suspicious links and registering to the unverified Friendster website to prevent threats and data compromise.
Thousands have already registered to the unverified Friendster site, according to CERT-PH.
Friendster was among the most popular and top social platforms that began in 2004 and was completely shut down in 2015. – gb