MANILA, Philippines – News of one of the old-school social networks, Friendster, being back sent social media users abuzz recently. However, the Department of Information and Communication Technology’s National Computer Emergency Response Team (DICT-NCERT) warned the public to exercise much caution when signing up for the site after conducting an assessment, as it seems to be a possible platform for phishing. Manila Bulletin has since published an interview with the developer of the new Friendster on Dec.1 to address issues linked to his nostalgic web development.
In a Cybersecurity Advisory post by NCERT, the agency stated that their is a possibility that the website (friendster.click) is being used for phishing for the following reasons:
- 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 link provided in the post uses a non-popular top-level domain (.click).
- It does not include an “About Us” page which could tell who developed the website.
- Furthermore, the website uses WordPress for its main service, which is not used for social networking platforms since it is a content management system.
Having said that, there is a possibility that the said website is being used for phishing.
Manila Bulletin’s Art Samaniego has reached out to the new Friendster’s founder, Bram Gumilang, a web developer from Indonesia, to get his side.
In the interview, Gumilang said: “Friendster always has that kind of nostalgic and sentimental value to me,” and that he created it because “it’s fun to build something, even more fun to see that people are also having fun with it,” since he “had a bit of free time” last year, and decided to build friendster.click “with free/open source platform, because why not.”
“While having a certain resemblance to the original Friendster, it’s quite obvious that the site is fan-made. The site is definitely not being used to run a scam operation, financial fraud, or anything like that,” Gumilang told Manila Bulletin.
When asked on what he has to say regarding claims that his website is a channel for phishing attacks, Gumilang said in the interview: “Just like any other site, by default, the site collects data. Browser information, geolocation, cookies, those kind of stuff. For other data that is more specific in nature (including email address, comments, personal information, etc.) it’s up to the users, the way they engage with the site, and how much they want to share about themselves.”
As of writing, more than 8,000 users have signed up for an account at Friendster.click, many of whom are Filipinos.
Like the original California-based Friendster, which had to close in 2018, the new fan-made version feeds its users’ nostalgic experience by letting them customize their profiles’ background and receive testimonials from friends.
NCERT-PH still cautions the public to not click suspicious links to avoid future potential threats.
– with reports from Manila Bulletin (Yes, Friendster Is Back by Art Samaniego)