Facebook

I’m frequently amused by the sort of stuff my Facebook friends “like”. For example: The more salacious content you find around Facebook often has a hidden agenda, for example the classic She did WHAT in school scam I wrote about last year. Snapchat allows you to take a pic or a video and set an expiry date after which it’s “theoretically” destroyed, just the sort of stuff that appeals to sexting teens. By extension, “leaked” Snapchats are just the sort of stuff that appeal to a whole different audience. Looking at the Leaked Snapchats 18+ page on Facebook, we can see it’s rather popular: Not bad for a...

Browsing through my Facebooks the other day, I came across an interesting little sponsored ad: Banking, you say? In your Facebook, you say? What could possibly go wrong?! The overriding concern that immediately sprung to mind was that you’re mixing two domains of a very, very different nature. On the one hand we have our social media, frequently the source of status updates about our breakfast, commentary on the latest lolcats and as I’ve written on numerous occasions before, favoured channel of scammers. On the other hand we have our financial well-being, records of our earnings and a domain which we generally expect to hold to the highest possible standards of security. Of course there is...

I’ve seen a few of these going around now, usually with different photos with some sort of mystique: The implied promise is of something interesting happening once you’ve clicked the like button and typed the number 1. There was one with an attractive girl and a square superimposed over her shoulder doing the rounds a little while ago too. I’ve seen others where the instructions are more explicit in terms of words or phrases to type. Here’s a good question: what usually happens when you like and comment on something in Facebook? The numbers go up (and you can see they’re already substantial) and it gets posted to your wall....

So someone sends you a link to the latest Gangnam parody / cat meme / man jumping on frozen pool video and the link looks something like this: http://bit.ly/10PMelv Nothing unusual about this, every second link shared these days uses a bit.ly or t.co (or comparable) URL shortener. Because you have an insatiable desire to participate in the latest social phenomenon, you click through and see this: There’s also nothing unusual about Facebook asking you for credentials, let’s log in. Aw c’mon, not this old trick of “now we want more crap from you before you can view the page”: Ok, fill it in and continue. Great, it wants...

Who wants free stuff? C’mon, everybody wants a free lunch, right? Yes, yes they do and that’s precisely the trigger used in scams like this one. Recently I wrote about the mechanics of another Facebook scam where the “bait” was photos of a salacious school girl. Many people – including female friends and my mother in law – readily fell for that one. This one takes quite a different and rather cunning approach which chains together numerous illusions and other means of deceiving the unsuspecting victim. It all starts with a Facebook friend sharing a link to a page with the promise of free goods just like this: Which brings you to the website...

I’ll admit to some amusement when I see friends liking pages such as this: I’ll admit to even more amusement when they’re mature adults (of either gender) or as seen recently, when they’re my mother in law. Of course when confronted about their salacious ways they’ll always swear black and blue that they never “liked” the link. Except they did, they just didn’t know it. What you’re seeing here is a Facebook “worm” or in other words a script which replicates itself. Someone sees it, clicks the link then it automatically appears on their wall without their knowledge. Three of their friends...