Happy New Year! > Facebook mocks FCC Chairman for getting account owned

Facebook scam artists have closed out 2009 by snagging a prominent victim: Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

On Friday morning at around 10:30 a.m., Mr. Genachowski sent his Facebook friends this puzzling message: “Adam got me started making money with this.” It was followed by a link to a Web page that is no longer active. The message blitz indicated that Mr. Genachowski’s account had been taken over by a malicious program that was using it to send out spam.

A Facebook spokesman, Larry Yu, said the company learned of the problem this morning and suspended the account, as it routinely does in such cases. An F.C.C. spokeswoman declined to comment.

Facebook sent this statement, which indicates that if Mr. Genachowski wants to continue to use Facebook, he will have to get some education about the safe use of this particular form of communication.

Users whose accounts have been compromised are put through a remediation process, where they must take steps to re-secure their account and learn security best practices. This is what happened with Chairman Genachowski’s account.

We educate people about online security through our Facebook Security Page, which has well over one million fans.