The Department of Information and Technology (DICT) warned the public about a new website that aims to deceive netizens by pretending to be the old social media platform ‘Friendster’.
A Facebook user’s post went viral after saying that Friendster has been revived. The post gained traction during the weekend, reaching more than 9,000 shares and 6,000 reactions.
The National Computer Emergency Response Team (NCERT), a division under the DICT Cybersecurity Bureau said that the website might be real it’s IP address was previously involved in a number of cybercrime reports including 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,” the NCERT said Monday.
The page also does not have an ‘About Me’ page which should tell the public about it’s developers.
“Having said that, there is a possibility that the said website is being used for phishing. Do not click suspicious links to avoid future potential threats. Do not register to this website because your data may be compromised,” the team added.
NCERT said that thousands of people have registered to the website.
Friendster was the top social media platform in 2004 but decided to shut down in 2015 due to lack of users and development.
