As Paul Ducklin predicted only a few days ago, scams related to Facebook’s launch of a video chat service powered by Skype are surfacing.
This particular scam doesn’t use the actual Facebook video service as Paul has predicted they will do, but it certainly is trying to ride the media coattails and attention Facebook’s announcement generated this week.
What is clever about this one is that if it were true that Facebook Video Chat was an application, you might be more easily convinced to approve the application to have more liberal permissions.
This version asks for your personal information, the ability to post messages to your wall, read your posts(?) and to do all of this any time it likes…
Strange, if it were a video calling app it would presumably only need to access my data when I am using it, right?
Fortunately, aside from being a better social engineering trick than many Facebook scams, this one simply spams your friends and leads you to the ubiquitous surveys to fill out and generate referral fees for the criminals.
If you see a wall post referencing “Enable video calls.”, don’t click it! Send your friend a message that they have been tricked.
I am sure this won’t be the last scam targeting folks who wish to use Facebook’s new service. Never download executables or other content proclaiming to enable the service.
Keep your eyes on Naked Security or our Facebook page for updates describing how to install the real service once it is available.
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