Monday, January 24, 2011
'My Total Facebook Views' scam spreads
Do you like this story?
NEW DELHI: In case you are curious to know how many people visit your Facebook profile, hold your curiosity. The app 'My Total Facebook Views' which has been doing rounds on the world's most popular social networking site is yet another of those Facebook scams.
The rogue application attempts to trick Facebook users to click a malicious link that tells the number of people who visited their profile. Upon clicking the link, users are asked to fill out a survey and grant them access to their personal information. However, doing this leaves you vulnerable to malware that can be downloaded on your system when you click the link.
The scam, which is spreading virally via status updates, includes a link to the suspicious service and text that reads, "My total facebook views are: 1245 Find out your total profile views."
There are no apps on Facebook to measure profile views currently, or know who visited your profile page. According to Facebook, "The exercise exposes your profile to malware and shares your personal information with an entity that will send you more spam in the near future."
According to reports, the rogue app also runs by the names ProfileSpy and Pro Check. Last year too a similar scam that spread like wildfire had hit Facebook that offered insight into who viewed your Facebook profile.
Last week, another scam was reported to have affected a large number of Facebook users. This viral scam -- My 1st St@atus -- was designed to earn revenue for its perpetrators. In fact, messages claiming to share the users' first ever Facebook status updates are still being posted on users' walls by this rogue application though the number has come down since then.
Typical posts read -- "My 1st St@tus was: '[random message]'. This was posted on [random date]. Find your 1st St@tus @ [LINK]". When users clicked on this link, which appeared to have been posted by a Facebook friend, they were taken to a rogue Facebook application, just like in the case of 'My Total Facebook Views'.
This application would then ask users to give it permission to access their profile. This would give the rogue application the ability to post the same message from the affected account to all in the friends' list. Users were also taken to a webpage which contained a survey.
The rogue application attempts to trick Facebook users to click a malicious link that tells the number of people who visited their profile. Upon clicking the link, users are asked to fill out a survey and grant them access to their personal information. However, doing this leaves you vulnerable to malware that can be downloaded on your system when you click the link.
The scam, which is spreading virally via status updates, includes a link to the suspicious service and text that reads, "My total facebook views are: 1245 Find out your total profile views."
There are no apps on Facebook to measure profile views currently, or know who visited your profile page. According to Facebook, "The exercise exposes your profile to malware and shares your personal information with an entity that will send you more spam in the near future."
According to reports, the rogue app also runs by the names ProfileSpy and Pro Check. Last year too a similar scam that spread like wildfire had hit Facebook that offered insight into who viewed your Facebook profile.
Last week, another scam was reported to have affected a large number of Facebook users. This viral scam -- My 1st St@atus -- was designed to earn revenue for its perpetrators. In fact, messages claiming to share the users' first ever Facebook status updates are still being posted on users' walls by this rogue application though the number has come down since then.
Typical posts read -- "My 1st St@tus was: '[random message]'. This was posted on [random date]. Find your 1st St@tus @ [LINK]". When users clicked on this link, which appeared to have been posted by a Facebook friend, they were taken to a rogue Facebook application, just like in the case of 'My Total Facebook Views'.
This application would then ask users to give it permission to access their profile. This would give the rogue application the ability to post the same message from the affected account to all in the friends' list. Users were also taken to a webpage which contained a survey.
This post was written by: a2TECH
a2TECH are a group of a professional bloggers, website designers and front end website developers. Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 Responses to “'My Total Facebook Views' scam spreads”
Post a Comment