We’re not sure how many people need the goss on a possible sex tape of their friends, but if you count yourself as curious as a cat, you could be hit with a terrible scam.
The news comes courtesy of security group Bitdefender Labs which has found a new scam currently affecting Facebook, and has hit over 2000 people in Australia, infecting their computers and leaving them wanting to know what happened.
The scam in question is called Trojan.FakeFlash.A and manages to get itself installed on computers simply by by posting a fake story on a Facebook feed designed to get hits, with titles such as “naked video” or “XXX private video” and the name of one of your Facebook friends.
Once clicked, you’ll be taken to a site that looks like a YouTube page, but without the video player running, and an error message that says “Adobe Flash Player has crashed, please update to the latest version.”
Clicking the update or continue button is the bait, and at that point, an extension is installed to your browser that is malware, which will then post itself to your Facebook account and try to multiply itself, stealing photos from your account to make the video happen, and potentially more data in the process.
It’s not the first time that Facebook users have been targeted by a scam, and it certainly won’t be the last. Security issues can run rampant on social networks, where scammers generally attempt to bring in marks by posting stories that seem too good to be true, and pretty much are, finding a way into a computer with the promise of free goods, money, or stories that are just too good to miss out on.
“Facebook ad-targeting ranges from specifying certain age groups and geographical areas to particular education groups and people with shared interests. Unlike email spam, this allows for very precise targeting of potential victims of scams,” said Andrei Serbanoiu, Bitdefender’s Online Threats Researcher.
“A single click leads users to fraudulent schemes that persuade them to give away sensitive data such as personal or credit card information. They may also be tricked into installing a malicious piece of software, taking part in an SMS sweepstakes scam or brought to fake shops and those shops selling counterfeit goods.”
Security software will, of course, help protect you from an infection, so make sure you have some form of internet security application installed, whether you’re on a Mac or a Windows PC.
Ultimately, if you see these messages on Facebook about your friend in a personal video, ask them first, because it’s unlikely to be real, and you might just get yourself spammed, scammed, and put online in the same sticky situation with your own fake sex tape advertised to the world.
