It might seem like the title of a rather seedy porn movie, but the truth is that a message spreading virally across Facebook about a father catching his daughter on her webcam is actually designed to make money for scammers.
Thousands of Facebook users are finding messages being posted by their online friends saying:
Look What happens when father catches daughter on her webcam. No Surveys! - <LINK>
It’s probably a sign of just how prevalent survey scams are today that the perpetrators of this latest scheme feel the need to say “No Surveys!” in their lure – but unfortunately, they’re lying.
If you do click on the link you are taken to what appears to be a thumbnail of a YouTube video, showing a young woman in a skimpy plaid skirt. It’s all rather reminiscent of Britney Spears’s “Hit Me Baby One More Time” music video, but possibly suggests something more scandalous.
The truth is, however, that you’re being asked to give permission to a Facebook application called “Epic”. If you’re foolhardy enough to grant it the rights, it will be able to access your profile, grab details of your friends, post messages from your account and even log in as any pages you administer.
Clearly that’s not something that you would be wise to do, but many people are giving the rogue application permission to do precisely that – effectively handing over their account lock, stock and barrel to complete strangers.
And despite the claims earlier that you won’t have to fill in any surveys… well, you will..
Each survey that the scammers trick you into completing earns them some more commission.
Meanwhile, the ne’er-do-wells behind this scheme have started posting more messages from your Facebook profile, driving even more people into visiting their link.
If you have been hit by a scam like this, check that your profile hasn’t been tampered with. For instance, you should check to see that no rogue applications still have access to your account and remove them.
Here’s a YouTube video where I show you how to clean-up your Facebook account:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or-qR0Y300w&w=500&h=311&rel=0]If you want to learn more about security threats on the social network and elsewhere on the internet, you could do a lot worse than join the Sophos Facebook page.
