Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Facebook Scam

Beware Facebook 'Photoshop' Scam

If you are not already one of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users duped into a "photoshop" scam, congratulations. More than 600,000 others have fallen prey to this latest Facebook scam.

Here's how it works.

You see a message on your Facebook Chat window from a friend that reads, "hey, i just made a photoshop of you."

There's also a link in the message to a third-party application, which asks for access to your profile in the same manner as many other outside apps. The app asks for access to your Facebook information, including your name, gender, photo, networks, lists of friends, user ID plus access to your Facebook Chat, reported The Huffington Post.

If you click "allow," the attack begins. The app distracts victims with pictures of animals with human-like faces. The app then starts spamming your Facebook friends via Chat.

M86 Security Labs , which was monitoring the scam on Monday, reported that it was "spreading rapidly" with more than 88,000 clicks per hour.

With more than 600 million active users around the world, Facebook has become a popular target for spammers. Viral scams can kick into high gear after only a few clicks, reported The Atlantic .

"At this point, we do not know what the end game is for the scammers here," according to M86 Security Labs. "The destination site results in no malicious infection and does not lead to a survey scam. Having access to a users' Facebook Chat could allow the scam application to be used to send out other messages."

The best thing to do if you have fallen for this scam is to remove the app immediately.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Facebook and Divorce

Facebook Divorce Rate In 2011: New Statistics
By: Peter Chubb


Facebook Divorce Rate In 2011: New Statistics
Having already discussed “Social Networking Etiquette“, we thought we would take a look at another issue, and that is the Facebook divorce rate in 2011. These new statistics seem a little worrying, and for good reason, as divorces have been on the rise not only because of Facebook but other social websites as well.

The reason for this is due to the fact that people are now able to use websites like Facebook to cheat on their partners, many of us have seen for ourselves how people behave on Facebook, this is just another one of those behaviors. Do not think that this gives you the green light to go out and have an affair, as social networking websites are also being used to catch you out.

According to one report on
TheTechJournal, more than 20 percent of an online divorce lawyers case list was because of an affair that started on Facebook. However, not all of them involve sexual relations, “The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to.”

Having said that, this is still no excuse and no chats of a sexual or flirty nature should happen if you are in a committed relationship – unless you have an understanding of-course.

There is even a case where one woman learned that her husband was divorcing her via Facebook, as he was seeing someone who he met on The Social Network. One thing we do know looking at the latest statistics,
Facebook and MySpace pages will now be introduced more and more over the coming months in divorce courts, so you had best watch out.

Have you ever caught your partner out on Facebook or MySpace?

 
Enhanced by Zemanta