Last time, a lot of our users report about the strange messages they got on Facebook. My investigation showed that such messages are sent from different accounts, however, all of them contained the same text and link. For some reasons, such an occasion was named as the Facebook virus. Read this post to know the details.
What is the Facebook virus?
It is not actually a virus, but a spam message. They are sent to you by your friend, your cousin, or even by an unknown person. It may look like legit one, but the strange text and unknown link, which tries to mimic a familiar website, are raising suspicions. Do you expect that the friend of yours, who didn’t even play poker, will offer you to get 50 free spins in an online casino? Likely no. And it looks like a joke when you see such a situation. Nonetheless, a lot of people click these links, and get involved in another turn of this fraud.
Some of these messages contain not a link, but a video. The text also differs – it mimics the short message asking something like “Is that you?”. However, regardless of the visual aspect, the consequences of clicking such message are the same. You can find more details in this post.
Let me explain the nature of these messages. Your friends and relatives do not send you these dubious messages. Their accounts were hijacked, and then used to spread these spam messages. The way cybercriminals get access to their accounts is hard to predict – it can be conducted with spyware, phishing or social engineering, or even an account purchase. As you have detected such dubious activity, contact this person and notify them about this case.
Several words about account hijacking
While phishing and other “manual” methods of stealing the credentials are less popular and usually targeted on a specific user or group of users. Spyware, in contrast to social engineering, phishing and others, is much more massive. This type of virus is very stealthy, since its target is to steal as much credentials as it can. And it really does – every time you are logging into your Facebook/Twitter account, it collects the values from login fields. This information then transferred to the control server, which is handled by malware distributors.
Is it dangerous for me?
Facebook virus is a malicious program, regardless if it is more dangerous or less. Usually, the links attached to these messages lead to dubious site. The previously mentioned example with online casino is a single among tens of variations. But regardless of the contents of this spam, the site will offer you to download an unknown program, which is usually classified as a potentially unwanted program (PUP), adware or browser hijacker1. It is always a bad idea to click any strange links on the web, and this case is not an exclusion.
Stay safe on the Internet!
- More about browser hijackers on Wikipedia