A spider under the skin? It’s a Facebook survey scam

SpiderEveryone knows that a fear of spiders is arachnophobia.

Maybe it’s time that we had an official word for a dislike of Facebook survey scams too? There are certainly plenty of people over on the Naked Security page on Facebook who are fed to the back teeth with the scams that spread virally across the social network, tricking users into taking surveys and earning the scammers money.

Here’s the latest – which claims to be a disgusting video of a spider under someone’s skin.

A spider under the skin Facebook scam

Sign up to our free newsletter.
Security news, advice, and tips.

A spider under the skin!
[LINK]
Omg so disgusting :s

Other versions can read:

O-M-G - Spider Grows Under Skin - Crazy!
[LINK]
Totally Crazy and just a little gross. But still Amazing!

and

GROSS! Spider grows under her skin
[LINK]

and

That's s0 Gr0ss! Sp!der Und3r Sk1n
[LINK]

and

This spider is brutal..
[LINK]
OMG - Spider inside the skin of this girl, extremely painful !

Clicking on the link takes you to a webpage which pretends that it is about to show you the video, but insists that you verify your age first.

A spider under the skin Facebook scam

However, clicking “Jaa” doesn’t confirm your age at all. It actually shares the message about the spider with your other Facebook friends (“Jaa” is the Finnish word for “Share”, and there has been a trend lately with survey scams to use this subterfuge).

If you make the mistake of sharing the link with your online pals, you will then be taken to a survey, overlaid over a pretend YouTube page.

A spider under the skin Facebook scam

The scammers earn commission for each survey completed, but they don’t want to tell you that as it may make you more reluctant to participate. Instead they fraudulently pretend that it is a YouTube age verification dialog.

If you got hit by this scam, make sure you have removed the entries from your news feed (to stop them being shared amongst your friends) and check your profile does not have any unwanted “Likes” under your “Likes and interests”.

If you use Facebook and want to get an early warning about the latest attacks, you should join the Sophos Facebook page where we have a thriving community of over 100,000 people.


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "Smashing Security" podcast. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

What do you think? Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.