Facebook myths and fakes

There is not a single week when we don’t see a new Facebook scam. We name scam everything that tries to fool the user to do something which he usually wouldn’t do or shouldn’t do:

• click on something – called also clickjacking
• “like” something – called also likejacking
• pay for something which is free
• pay for something thinking that you help a cause (sick baby, sick child, people surviving a natural disaster, etc.)
• share private information when he shouldn’t
• install malicious programs
• install malicious Facebook apps
• visit a website which contains fake information
• visit a/purchase from a webshop with fake products
• help a friend in need with some money (your friend is just fine, most probably just his email account was impersonated or even hacked)

For more details about these, check out the Facebook Threats page.

There is a special category of scams which we call myths.

Probably the most well known myth on Facebook is the “see who visited your profile/timeline”. It is not possible… so forget about this.

Another one is the call to action because Facebook will charge for the service. They won’t…

The human curiosity (used skillfully by social engineering techniques) always wins. People click there, install programs or apps.

Before they stopped being a simple annoyance and started to be an annoying industry, we were trying to write about them.  But,  currently there are so many in circulation, that we are forced to simply treat them in the same way as we treat spams: we ignore them.

You should do that too and report them to Facebook: click on the arrow on the top right corner of the post and select “Report Story or Spam”.

Don’t forget that nothing is actually completely free on the Internet.

If something is too out of the ordinary to be true, then probably it isn’t true.

Even if something is really free of charge and it is not a scam, there are other ways to pay: tracking is worth a lot of money for certain companies.

Facebook has published a page with some helpful insights about security on their platform: check it here.

Also the Facebook Security page is a very helpful source of information.

 

Sorin Mustaca

Data Security Expert

via Avira – TechBlog http://techblog.avira.com/2012/10/16/facebook-myths-and-fakes/en/

© Copyright 2012 Sorin Mustaca, All rights Reserved. Written For: Sorin Mustaca on Cybersecurity

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