Justin Bieber giving away free concert tickets? Facebook scam spreads virally

A Facebook scam claiming to offer free tickets to a Justin Bieber concert is in fact signing up teenagers to an expensive premium rate mobile phone service.

Messages intercepted by Sophos are appearing on Facebook reading:

WOW! Justin Bieber Is Giving Away Free Concert Tickets Now!

Obviously, many fans of the pint-sized popstar will be eager to get their paws on tickets to a Justin Bieber concert and so may be only too willing to click on the attached bit.ly link.

However, what they will find is that they are being scammed by tricksters, who are using the lure of free Justin Bieber concert tickets to trick the unwary into giving permission for a rogue application to post updates to their Facebook wall and status. The messages claim that the Facebook user “has just snagged 4 free tickets to see Justin Bieber!” (they haven’t, of course) with the headline “Justin Bieber Free Concert Ticket Giveaway! Justin Bieber World Tour”.

Of course,…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to read more of the exclusive content we post.

Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.