For every bit of good involved with social networking sites, there’s a dash of bad. It’s true for MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, and especially Facebook. Facebook has more than 500 million active members. If even one percent of those users are interested in scamming others, that’s still 5 million scammers. The following list details a number of major Facebook scams of which users should be aware. Knowing they exist is the first step in steering clear from the dangers.
- Quiz scams: If you’re a frequent Facebook user, it’s likely you’ve seen the tremendous amount of quizzes available. They will usually entice the user by offering a free way to check your IQ or determine what city is best for you. Once you click on the advertisement, the application installs and you’re asked a number of easy questions. To get your results, though, the application requires a phone number. This is how the scam works. By entering your phone number, you’re signing up for something else and you’re charged a monthly fee.
- Friends in trouble scams: This scam is particularly devious because it tries to capitalize on the emotion of friends. If a friend’s account is hacked, the scammer will message or chat with as many people as possible, feeding them a story about how they need money because they’ve been robbed. The “friend” will ask you to wire them money, and then they’ll disappear.
- Login screen scams: This scam is used on numerous sites, but it’s often difficult to catch. Hackers can reproduce the exact look of trustworthy sites to get people to log in. When they try, the hackers steal their account information and take over their account. You can tell when someone’s account has been hacked in this manner because they will spam their friends’ walls.
- Koobface worm: This scam propagates by hacking accounts and sending messages to that user’s friends. The message will contain a link that appears to take the user one place then takes the user to a fake site that requires a download. Once the file is downloaded, the worm infects your system.