Some of you may remember Friendster, the social media platform considered as OG from the 2000’s. After Friendster completely closed their website on 2015, there have been no official statement by Friendster itself regarding their social network. However, recently, there are rumors circulating that there is a Friendster comeback, along with a website that surprisingly opened with the domain friendster.click last November 26.
For a quick recap, Friendster was a famous online community before Facebook, where you can browse testimonials as they call it, have your favorite tunes playing on various accounts, and allows users to customize and edit their accounts whenever they want in different enticing themes and styles.
As the website as well as a Facebook post claim Friendster’s comeback, there have been already more than 9,000 shares over the weekend. The website announced that it was open for sign-ups, and apparently, there have been already more than 6000 registered accounts including a lot of Filipinos who blindly decided to join the hype.
What's with the website?
It is better not to open the website yourself for your own assurance of protection and security of your data. That is why for everyone’s curiosity, we compiled some of the information about the website and its contents.
For starters, it has been said that it has an incredibly slow loading speed, so it’s already a turn off. It also has a simple design with only a very few parts/options including blogs, members, groups, and forums. As of the moment, Friendster doesn’t have an app too, therefore you can only access it through the website alone.
Some articles stated their attempt on trying to register an account and noticed the fact that the URL ends in /wp-login.php, which clearly indicates that the website is not a brand-new social networking platform but rather a WordPress-based site only using a theme to make it look like a social networking platform.
Legit or not?
Internet users have been alerted by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) that a popular phishing website is disguising a link to a new version of the former social network Friendster.
Although the website looks to be real, the IP address has been linked to past allegations of crimes including phishing, the DICT stated.
Also, take note that the website uses the suspicious “.click” instead of the authentic and reliable “.com” domain.
The DICT, which took serious action on investigating this website, discovered and announced that the IP address that hosts the website had previous reports of “phishing, brute force and DDoS attacks, hacking, and host exploitations”. It was also stated that the website has no “About Us” page which is essential to every website for users to know more about the developers.
There have been statements that those who attempted to dig deeper discovered that friendster.click is being hosted by a business called Nobis Technology Group, LLC. While the business does have a LinkedIn profile, more investigation finds that it is rated and tagged as medium risk for being fake and a bogus. Since the site also had Google Ads, individuals who looked into the “new” Friendster’s Ad ID discovered that the website’s hosting location is Indonesia.
Therefore, Friendster’s comeback with this website is not confirmed as legit up to now. The DICT gravely warns everyone, “Do not click suspicious links to avoid future potential threats. Do not register to this website because your data may be compromised,”.
That is why in conclusion, we are warning you not to make an account on this “new” Friendster since it has a very high chance of being hacked and may risk and endanger your data as a result. You should definitely avoid this site right now while we and the authorities conduct more research and investigations regarding this sudden resurfacing of the former social network, Friendster.
