The ’scammers’ seem to have moved from the traditional method, ex: email, to exploit users on social networks. I am guessing that aside from the immense popularity of these sites, maybe people are a little more trusting on social networks, especially when they see messages coming from ‘friends’.
The latest scam making its rounds on Facebook is message that asks users if they want to install a “dislike” button.
When you click on the message link it tries to trick you into letting the rogue application access your profile. Once it has access to your profile, it sends our more spam from your account to all your friends, essentially propagating itself and then makes you complete a survey before you get the dislike button.
Once you complete the survey you are indeed given the chance to download a ‘dislike’ button but at this point your account has already been compromised. It appears that the makers of the dislike button aren’t involved in this scam, their tool is just being used as bait.
The good news is that you CAN get the dislike button without being tricked into compromising your account. The dislike button is a FireFox add-on created by FaceMod and can be found here; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13672/.
Good Networking!
Eric Hobbs
Technology Associates
ehobbs@technologyassociates.net
919-459-0109 – Direct
Things to Think About…
- Check out Graham Cluley’s blog for more detail (http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2010/08/16/facebook-dislike-button-scam-spreads-virally/)
- Know the 5 most common Facebook Scams Check out my previous post detailing the 5 most common Facebook Scams (http://www.technologyassociates.net/5-common-facebook-scams/)
