More scams are plaguing Facebook users, who are clicking on links thinking they are going to be able to view saucy or amusing videos.
The scammers themselves aren’t using an awful lot of imagination, once again using Italian TV hostess Marika Fruscio’s wardobe malfunction as bait to get users to click. And once again exploiting Finnish “Jaa” dialogs (it translates to “Share”) to trick users into spreading their links.
And quite frankly, why should the scammers change their tactics if they still work on a worrying high number of people? Right now this latest scam is spreading like wildfire.
Versions of the message include:
This girl must be Out of her Mind to do this on live Television!
[LINK]
Watch the embarrassing moment of her!
or
This girl must be Out of her Mind to do this on live Television!
[LINK]
It is really embarrassing.!
A variety of different websites are hosting the scam, including a number of free-to-setup Tumblr pages.
Clicking on the link, as regular readers of Naked Security or followers of the Sophos Facebook page know, is not a good idea.
You think you’re going to see a video, but you are tricked into sharing the link instead.
Even after doing that, you won’t get to see the video.
When I tested the scam on my computer I was taken a to a website that was clearly pretending to be YouTube, but – presumably to avoid getting itself into trouble with lawyers – used a “YonTube” logo instead.
The page says that you need to take an “age verification” test before viewing the video. In fact, it’s a survey or online prize draw – the scammers earn commission the more they trick into taking the survey.
In some cases, the surveys may ask you for personal contact information and your mobile phone number. Be very wary of handing over such information – in the past we’ve seen many scams that sign your mobile phone number up to premium rate services.
If you got hit by this scam, make sure you have removed the entries from your news feed (to stop them being shared amongst your friends) and check your profile does not have any unwanted “Likes” under your “Likes and interests”.
If you use Facebook and want to get an early warning about the latest attacks, you should join the Sophos Facebook page where we have a thriving community of over 100,000 people.
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