Facebook still continues to attract large numbers of fraudsters. Although the threat of Trojans and other Malware is still active, many specially developed applications are used to convert a user’s private Facebook data into money.
My Facebook page was visited more than 15.000 times!
If you see someone with a message like this on their Facebook wall, they have probably been a victim of the latest scam on Facebook. The cause is an application that pretends to show statistics of visitors. It is spread typically by the Facebook walls of friends, with announcements like this.
This scam application, discovered by Emsisoft, is called “List your stalkers“ and promises to show detailed statistics of one’s Facebook page. Of course scam applications are deleted by Facebook, but the authors of these applications continuously re-upload their applications with alternate names, swamping Facebook with hundreds of applications to delete.
How the scammers make money
The scam application gains access to personal information such as place of residence, age, marital status and so on. This information can then be sold online in “black-market” forums, where personal details are auctioned off to buyers to be used in identity theft and spam lists. Typically, the more information, the higher the price.
Another new trick used by these rogue applications is a survey during the “installation” of the fake application. This survey pretends to secure your online identity and protect you from spam. But the authors actually receive money for each completed survey in combination with the demographic data.
Says, Christian Mairoll, CEO at Emsisoft, “There is no direct danger to the security of the computer. Nevertheless this personal information can be used maliciously and the threat of identity theft is critical. Facebook users should always be skeptical with dubious messages and offers – either on Facebook or anywhere else they may visit on the web. Users of Facebook should take note that Facebook generally does not allow applications to show advanced user statistics, such as number of profile views.”
How to clean up your Facebook profile after a scam may interest you!
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