Pages

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Facebook: Spams, malware, viruses etc

Cleaning the spam out of inbox really is the pits. No matter how many spam/rule filters that I create, the spammers always find a way to bypass these rules with creativity.

The latest spams that are so annoying have been the wave of spam purporting to be from Facebook. How stupid do these spammers think we are?

Unfortunately they probably claim some victims every now and then, otherwise they would have quitted by now.

What do Facebook email scams look like?

 I'll post a few screenshots up so that anyone who isn't tech or internet savvy can have a point of reference. I love the idea of foiling those stupid scammers by posting this up. Anyway, if you get any of these, do NOT click on them. Delete them immediately.

If you really feel the urge to check your Facebook due to these 'fake' reminders, type "http://www.facebook.com" directly into your browser instead of clicking on the 'link' provided. Here are some fake Facebook spams and scams, bon appetit:

Facebook scam clickily.ws
Do yourself a favour and don't click on it, don't 'like' the page, don't add the application and don't add the java script to your address bar or else the spam will be sent to all your friends. If you have already become a victim, you NEED to REMOVE the application from your privacy settings in Facebook. Clickily.ws is a malware and may also possibly be a virus too so don't forget to run your virus and spyware applications.


Hover the mouse over the hyperlinked word "1 messages" and you will see where the landing page is> as you can see in this scam email, it alleges to be from Facebook yet the hyperlink takes the user to http://climbershub(dot)com/single(dot)html and this is dodgy



Hover the mouse over the hyperlinked section "To login to Facebook" and you will see where the landing page is> as you can see in this scam email, it alleges to be from Facebook yet the hyperlink takes the user to http://climbershub(dot)com/single(dot)html and this is dodgy


Do NOT open the attachments - it is most likely a virus/malware/spyware or something malicious.

 How can you identify between a real email and a fake one?

It's getting hard to determine between a real one and a scam because the spammers and scammers are getting intelligent.
  • Don't open up attachments that are from unknown source.
  • Delete emails from anyone that you don't recognise or you're not expecting.
  • If there's a link that's embedded in the email, hover your mouse over the link (do NOT click on it!) and you'll see whether the link that is on your email is the same or differs from the link that is actually embedded (see the images that I've provided).
The same goes for all those fake 'job' emails and fake 'bank password' alert emails. The latest scam that even almost had me caught was when a virus alert popped up on the screen that looked like an authentic Microsoft or Nortons virus checking alert that says you must click on it immediately to stop the 'virus' from infecting your computer.

It compels the user to click quickly to 'activate' the virus checker but instead this activates the virus/malware. I find that if that happens, I kill the pop up and run the virus checking software immediately from the task bar section of the PC (the virus checking icon is usually near your clock on the bottom, right hand side corner of your screen).

No comments:

Post a Comment