We have had a flurry of customers, friends and family members ask for help recovering from facebook scams recently, and there seems to be no end in sight.
The typical chain of events is that a facebook user decides to view a video or picture that they notice “advertised” in their feed or on another friend’s wall. In order to see the video or picture, the user has to click the like button and follow a series of steps. Chances are, the scammers running the scheme are interested in one of several things: your facebook credentials, inspiring you to download a virus disguised as a movie player or other software, or encouraging you to visit a website that places malicious programs on your computer.
When the scam leads to a virus or malware being installed on your computer without your knowledge, the group quite possibly has control of your computer and perhaps the availability to see and collect passwords and secure information used to login to bank accounts, email, workplace applications and yes, even facebook.
How do you tell if a popular video or picture is a scam?
Here’s a recent scam, and some tips.
Babysitter Goes to Jail After She Uploads This HORRIBLE Baby Photo Online
A screenshot after clicking the link to the facebook page
A couple things tipped me off right away. First, in the lightly shaded box that contains a sampling of people who like the picture, you can’t click on 2,325 people to view their names. You also can’t click on the individuals listed in the shaded box. I clicked on the Wall tab to compare numbers of fans. When I first started writing and researching this piece on Sunday evening, there were over 200,000 fans.
Screenshot from wall view
As of Monday evening, there were only 73 fans. That’s good! 200,000 people realized this was a scam and unliked it. You can also see the Report Page link is circled. You can always click that link to report a page for spam, inappropriate material, etc.
Here’s another feature of the page that made me think this page was bad news:
I couldn’t click on Andrew Martin Tomlinson to view his profile. When I used the facebook search box to find him, here’s the profile I found:
When you change your profile picture on facebook, it follows you everywhere until you change it again. Because the search results only found one Andrew Martin Tomlinson, they should have shown the same profile picture in both locations. Because the text in that lightly shaded box wasn’t clickable, it was likely a screen shot.
Odd grammar and misspellings, too good to be true promises of goods or coupons, or requiring you to fulfill certain steps before viewing can also be signs of a facebook spam page.
Don’t feel bad if you have fallen prey to such a scheme – the strategies for persuading people to follow through with the instructions are becoming more and more believable, and some users are reporting that the like button is actually being hidden under other text causing accidental clicks.
What should you do if you have made this mistake? First, delete the link from your page. This will stop other friends from making the same mistake you made. Also, if another friend begins sending weird video and photo links to your wall, delete those as well and notify the friend. And, change your facebook password. Many business sector security policies require users to change passwords for email and computer login every 45 days, and that is not a bad idea for social networking accounts like facebook.
Additionally, on your own profile under your account settings, click on the application link to see what applications are currently running and showing in your facebook profile. All of these applications can access some of your facebook information, and sometimes your friends’. If you don’t use an application or don’t know what it is, delete it.
And, if you believe your computer was compromised, run an antivirus/malware scan immediately.
You can also visit the facebook security page to learn more about what happens if your account is hijacked, and what type of schemes invite trouble for facebook users.
