by Sophie Curtis, Mirror (excerpt)

Men being targeted in Facebook blackmail sex scam

If you’ve been on Facebook in the past couple of weeks, you’ve probably noticed several people taking part in the “10 Concerts” status update game.

The game asks Facebook users to share a list of nine music gigs they’ve attended, and one they haven’t, and then encourages their friends to guess which is the odd one out.

[…] This is when hackers use information they know about you to gain your trust, before persuading you to do something that compromises your online security.

Brian Solis, principal analyst at cyber security firm Altimeter, warned that hackers can use this technique to access everything from your password to your financial information and more.

“Social engineering is the art of manipulating people out of confidential information aka secrets. Hackers use this technique to convert secrets into access,” he said in a LinkedIn post .

“In this case, asking about bands could be a quasi phishing scam. For example, nine bands can tell a hacker quite a bit about an individual.

“When live shows are added to other information from a user’s profile, hackers can then approximate age, interests, religion, etc.”