Smiley hats and free Vans scams flood Facebook

Hundreds of thousands of Facebook users have been fooled into believing that they will receive a hat with a large smiley face on it, and could potentially be putting themselves at risk of being scammed in the process.

Over 300,000 people so far have been tricked into liking a Facebook page, and sharing the link with their friends, in the dubious belief that they will be sent a free smiley hat to promote a firm’s new clothing line.

The message reads:

First 750,000 Get a Free Smiley Hat To Help Promote Our New Clothing Line.
‎1 – Join The Page 2 – Click on the share button (bottom left hand side of the page) You must do this too get your FREE hat! 3 – Write on the wall what color you want ( White – Black – Red ) 4 – After roughly 6 hours, you will have an email sent to your facebook account for shipping information 5 – Enjoy your NEW hat! :) ** All Countries Can Get Their Hat **

Sure enough, if you follow the…

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.