This scam popped up on Facebook this week. I saw it on my profile this morning. The scam looks harmless enough. A friend of yours has posted what appears to be a video of a laughing baby on your Facebook Wall. Clicking the link will trigger most modern browsers to throw up a phishing site warning.

Do not click on this link! Simply delete the post. Your friend is not a spammer. Their account was likely highjacked. Be a good friend. Tell them their account has been highjacked and encourage them to change their password, log out and back in under the new password.

TIP: Many of these scams originate in Eastern Europe and English is not their first language, hence the poor grammar and occasional misspellings.

Two weeks ago, a particularly nasty scam made the rounds on Facebook and according to sources, has not been stopped by Facebook yet. It’s called, “WOW IT WORKS” and is delivered via Facebook’s Events app.

I myself, was hit by it on my own Facebook page. I hadn’t been on the page all day but started receiving dozens of texts from friends that I was spamming them.

Here’s how the scam seems to work:

1. A victim (in this case, me) is randomly chosen from Facebook. Well, not quite randomly. It seemed to target members with more than 1,000 friends.
2. The victim’s name is added to the WOW IT WORKS app as a creator on Facebook’s Developer section.
3. The victim’s name is used to send out an invite to a fake event called WOW IT WORKS. The invite is sent to all of the victim’s friends; in my case, over 1,300 people received the scam invite.
4. The victim’s name is shown on the event as “attending”.
5. The event location is a short URL to a scam Web site that will infect the user’s machine with malware.

TIP: Always check the link and reviews of any app before adding it. If an app has thousands of players, but only a few fans, or hundreds of negative reviews, it’s a scam. It did not come from your friend. Your friend’s account was either unknowingly compromised, or they were tricked by it as well.

 

Have you seen this scam on Facebook? How did you react?

Another click-jacking scam has surfaced on Facebook. Click-jacking scams like this are getting more clever and harder to detect each week. Unlike the previous farmville cash scam, this one is bold enough to use the copyrighted name and graphics. This makes it all the more insidious as thousands of FarmVille players will unknowingly click on this, assuming it to be legitimate.

Here’s the attribute to watch out for:

1. Despite the proper spelling and artwork this time, the scammers still gave a huge clue: FarmVille has a capital ‘F’ and ‘V’. Their version is all lowercase.
2. No logo on the “Allow Access” screen
3. Hundreds of negative reviews, but only two fans.
4. The “Allow Access” screen says that farmville is for “Sending buildings to friends.” Since when?

TIP: Always check the link and reviews of any app before adding it. If an app has thousands of players, but only a few fans, or hundreds of negative reviews, it’s a scam. It did not come from your friend. Your friend’s account was either unknowingly compromised, or they were tricked by it as well.

F’acebook Antivirus

Notice the misspelling in Facebook. Facebook was pretty quick to remove this particularly nasty scam, but not before hundreds of thousands of profiles were infected. People have been wising up and deleting these scams as soon as they appear, but this one doesn’t seem to want to be deleted! Users on Facebook forums have been complaining that after deleting it, the photo remains.

TIP: According to Facebook Insider, there is only one way to remove this scam from your profile:

1. Open your photos
2. Click the offending picture
3. Look for your name in the list of people tagged
4. Click the ‘Remove Tag’ link that appears beside your name
5. The photo will then disappear. Just deleting it will not work.

Farmville Cash scam

With over 88 million monthly users, it was inevitable that FarmVille would become a target for scams. Indeed, Social Threat’s Scott Vowels predicted this last week in a comment. The FamVille Cash scam is similar to the other album clickjacking scams we’ve been highlighting lately.
Here’s the attribute to watch out for:

1. Uses the correct FarmVille logo for cash, but remember, FarmVille’s currencies are not called “FarmVille Cash,” they’re called “Farm Cash” and “Farm Coins.” You can see how easily people are being fooled by that.
2. “I’ve sent you a 900 farmville cash using farmville cash! Accept this gift and send one back!” Notice the poor grammar, the improper capitalization and the call to action which, if clicked, will install the scam application on your profile.
3. Friends are randomly tagged, as is the case in most of these scams, and the app is posted seemingly by itself.
4. Album poster is different than the photo poster, and the name seems to be three different ethnic groups in one.

Additionally, we have two more screenshots for you. This first one shows that this app’s page has a number of anomalies itself.

1. No logo
2. 1,454 people gave this app a 1-star rating.
3. 108,000+ users, but only 2 friends
4. Category is “All” instead of “Games.”
5. No recent posts

And finally, look at the reviews themselves. People who were scammed are speaking out against this app.

TIP: Just because you play a large, safe game like FarmVille, doesn’t mean that you’re safe from scams. By simply looking at the game page before adding it, you would easily see that this page is fishy. Over 100,000 people have fallen prey to this scam. Don’t be one of them. If FarmVille logos appear in your photo albums, delete them.