As more and more companies put anti-spam defences in place at their email gateway, and home users hide beneath the umbrella of junk mail protection that their ISP or web email account provide, spammers may have to become more inventive in how they get their marketing messages in front of punters.
We’ve spoken a lot about Facebook security in the past, but mostly from the point of view of identity theft and the productivity challenge. Now we are seeing spammers sending messages directly to Facebook users’ “walls” (essentially a graffiti area where you pals can scrawl whatever you like).
Here are some examples of Facebook spam that I have seen on users’ walls where their “friends” have left a spam message promoting a drug store that will allegedly help you enhance your sexual organs:
I can’t believe that someone is manually entering these spam messages and posting them on Facebook. It must be an automated script or a piece of malware which is taking advantage of when a Facebook user is online and splatting the walls of other users with these nuisance messages.
In some ways this is worse than email spam – because it’s not only YOU who sees the message. Anyone who visits your profile and reads your wall will see the spam message too. And human nature being what it is, there are probably some dumbos who would actually click on the link and visit the promoted website too. :-(
Here’s another example from another Facebook users’ wall:
Me? I don’t have a wall on my Facebook profile. I disabled it under my Facebook privacy options. I just don’t see the need for one.
If a friend has something to say to me they’re welcome to email me or phone me up. (No, I don’t list either of those on Facebook either)
