Millions of Facebook users invited to scam events, as spammers exploit social network

Spammers have invited millions of Facebook users to bogus events on the social network, in their latest attempt to generate income from online survey scams.

Sophos researchers have discovered bogus events, promoting revenue-generating scams that put cash into the pockets of the spammers, that have targeted – in some cases – over 10 million Facebook users.

For instance, an event called “Who blocked you from his friend list ?” has already tricked over 165,000 people into signing-up, with a staggering 10.3 million users still debating whether to respond or not.

The scammers embed instructions into the “More info” section of the event’s summary, which leads the unsuspecting Facebook user into visiting webpages designed to earn money for those behind the scheme.

How do the scammers earn money? By tricking you into taking an online survey or competition, the masterminds behind the scam generate commission. In some instances they also ask for your mobile phone number and then sign…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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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.