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Hottest & Funniest Golf Course Video scam spreads virally on Facebook – beware!

20
May
2011

Yet another scam is spreading virally across Facebook, posing as a video in a scheme to make money for the confidence tricksters behind it.

The messages show what appears to be a thumbnail of a video showing a man standing closely behind a scantily clad woman to give her golfing advice.

The Hottest & Funniest Golf Course Video - LOL. Watch the Hottest & Funniest Golf Course Video Don\

The Hottest & Funniest Golf Course Video - LOL
[LINK]
Watch the Hottest & Funniest Golf Course Video Don\

Another version of the scam uses football rather than golf as the lure:

The Most Funniest & Hottest Footbal Video - Must Watch!

The Most Funniest & Hottest Footbal Video - Must Watch!
[LINK]
Watch the Funniest & Hottest Footbal Video - Must Watch!

The links in the messages we have seen so far have pointed to a webpage at blogspot.com, although this could – of course – be changed by the scammers in future variations.

If you make the mistake of clicking on the link in the hope that you might see a funny saucy video you will find that you have fallen straight into the scammers’ trap – as your Facebook page has been updated to say that you also “Like” the page, thus sharing it virally with all of your friends.

You will also be encouraged to complete an online survey for “verification” purposes, which in reality only earns commission for the bad guys who kicked off the money-making scheme in the first place.

The Hottest & Funniest Golf Course Video survey

Unfortunately, when I tested the scam I found no evidence that Facebook’s newly introduced security measures to intercept scams and warn of dangerous links had been effective.

How to clean-up the scam from your Facebook page

If you have been unfortunate enough to have been hit by this scam, here’s how you clean-up.

However, your mouse above the offending entry on your Facebook page and you should see an “X” appear in the top right hand corner of the post. You should now be able to mark the post as spam (which will remove it from your page).

Remove the post by marking it as spam

Unfortunately, this hasn’t also removed the page from the list of pages you like, so you will need to edit your profile to manually remove it. You should find it listed under “Activities and Interests”.

Unlike the offending webpage

Be sure to remove any other pages you don’t recognise in that list also.

If you use Facebook and want to learn more about spam, malware, scams and other threats, you should join the Sophos Facebook page where we have a thriving community of over 80,000 people.

Hat-tip: Thanks to Naked Security reader Lars for first alerting us to this attack.

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