An Irish Facebook user has fallen victim to an international scam whereby fraudsters hijack a user's account and pretend to be the user.

The scammers hack into the user's Facebook account and then message all the friends saying they've been mugged in London.

Dublin Web designer John Braine, 36, said a scammer hijacked his account and then pretended he was John.

John said "Fake John" emailed all his Facebook friends to say John had been mugged at gunpoint in London, was "completely freaked and needed money to pay for my hotel and a flight home."

"While I was scrambling around trying to find the best way of reporting it, the 'other me' was busy chatting to all my Facebook friends telling them that I'd been mugged at gunpoint in London and I was completely freaked and needed money to pay for my hotel and a flight home.

"One friend said the scammer got quite aggressive when she asked him how I/he knew her."

Facebook is treating the scam as a "low volume attack," because an unknown number of people have been scammed.

A Facebook spokeswoman said: “This is a very low-volume attack, affecting a small number of users, but we are concerned about any potential security threat and we’re taking this issue very seriously.”

She said Facebook analysts would disable any such compromised accounts and and try to get them back to their rightful owner.

Well that's all fine and dandy, but has anyone tried actually contacting anyone in Facebook?