As the news of Whitney Houston’s sudden demise spread like wildfire, and becomes a trending topic on social networking sites, cyber crooks are wasting no time to capitalize on her tragic death.

The security firm TrendMicro found two scams – a clickjacking attack on Facebook and another link circulating on Twitter.

The scam on Facebook was spreading with through wall posts the read, “I Cried watching this video. RIP Whitney Houston”, and a link to the supposed video. As usual, clicking on the link takes the users through several redirections until they are landed on a survey scam site.

The security firm, upon further investigation on the domains involved in the redirections, found 101 more survey scams registered on the same IP where the domains are hosted.

The firm also found tweets with malicious links taking advantage of the singer’s death, which is trending worldwide on Twitter. Clicking on the link takes people to a blog dedicated to Houston’s career, but redirects them to a Web page offering several Whitney Houston wallpapers.

Downloading wallpaper triggers another offer to download Whitney Houston ringtones, and the user is eventually taken to a survey site that asks for mobile number.

Always be cautious when clicking news items on Facebook or Twitter feeds, especially with trending topics.

A sophisticated fraudster has been sentence to prison for 15 months for stealing £35,000 (over $57,000) by pillaging Facebook accounts of its victims. The man, Iain Wood from New Castle, admitted to get past online bank security checks of neighbors’ bank account after determining their password by using their personal details posted on Facebook.

Wood was reported to spent 18 hours a day on Facebook to find out personal information about his acquaintances. He will logged into his victims’ bank accounts and tried to reset their password, by first claiming he had forgotten his password. Using clues gleaned from Facebook , he would attempt to answer security questions to bypass the password requirement. Typically he changed the address details of victim’s account and would withdraw cash with replacement cards he received in the post since changing address is rarely protected by two-factor authentication.

He stole the money between June 2008 and June 2010 and used it for gambling. His scam unraveled when in November 2009 he made an error of transferring money out of a neighbor’s account into his own. When he was arrested by the police he said, “Have you been on to me for a while?” This has led to more suspicion and on being searched his apartment police found bank account PIN, passport belonging to another victim and bills and other related paper works.

It is reminder to all Facebook users that we should be very cautious of not only what we click on Facebook but also whom we become friends as well as what we share on the social network. It is best to keep our own private information or at lease personal details on social media shouldn’t be use the same for other essential online services like banking.

Wikipedia describes phishing as:

… phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

What this means is, you may one day end up on a web site that looks exactly like Facebook’s login page. Alaways be sure to look at your web browser’s address bar to ensure you are currently at the domain “facebook.com”, if you see something other than “facebook.com” in your address bar, leave immediately and go directly to www.facebook.com.

If and when you encounter a facebook phishing scam, please report it directly to facebook.