We have seen a lot of Facebook users post the following message to their wall today:
VIRUS GOING THROUGH OUR COMMENTS. IT WILL START SENDING LINKS IN YOUR NAME. IT SAYS, “I KNOW YOU WILL LOVE THIS”, OR “LOOKING FOR SOME FUN”,THEN IT HAS A PAGE LINK SAYING, “NEW GIFTS FOR YOU”. DO NOT OPEN THIS LINK. THEY ARE POPPING UP EVERYWHERE!!! PLEASE COPY AND PUT IT ON YOUR STATUS FOR EVERYONE TO SEE…
The message above has been confirmed as a hoax, but there are several other scams spreading in similar fashion. Rogue Facebook applications, hacked accounts and users clicking on faulty code are the culprits.
For example, just this morning we ran across this scam that’s been circulating for ages:
Notice the comment above made by Paul. If Lilli isn’t an educated and aware Facebook user, then she might think that is a legitimate comment made by her friend. Scammers abuse this trust often, and are probably more successful with an attack of this nature than a random, silly wall posting on a user’s Newsfeed.
Poor Paul is wrecking further havoc with his Facebook friends. The post shown below shows yet another comment made by his account onto one of his friends wall postings:
If Debbie clicks on this link, then she’ll be taken to a phishing site that will attempt to obtain her Facebook user name and password.
The moral of the story is don’t assume links posted by a Facebook friend are legitimate. Clicking too quickly can compromise your own Facebook account and your computer system. When in doubt, you can use an online link scanner to make sure you aren’t clicking on a link to a scam site or malicious code.
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