Facebook has become the biggest trend of communication with keeping us near to
our friends via Internet since 2004. Across the world, there are more than 800 million users. It has
become habit in our daily life to open our Facebook profile atleast
once in a day. Meanwhile it has also become a way for hackers or scammers to spread online scams worldwide. They encourage users to click on pictures, videos or links that user finds attractive like leaked celebrity’s nude pictures or videos. When the user clicks on the link, it redirects them to a malicious website or to a malicious Facebook App. Where he or she doesn’t find the required content but it unknowingly gets shared onto their profile. And, then their friends gets ready to be a victim of the scam.
During the last year 2013 and this year 2014 more than 8, 50, 000+ users become victims to the threats on Facebook. The most famous threats were the malicious applications residing on the Facebook which users unknowingly clicked.
In a two years research preformed by Bitdefender (Internet security company), the company
has revealed that millions of Facebook users are affected by the same Facebook threats
many times.
Top seven most dangerous Facebook scams till 2014
revealed by Bitdefender are as below:
1. Emma Watson’s sexy videos leaked scam (October 2014):
Scammers have taken advantage for the popularity of Emma Watson, to spread Trojan across the
world via Facebook. The leaked sexy videos of Hollywood actress Emma Watson has distributed
more Trojans on Facebook as compare to other images. The curiosity to know about, what is
interesting in the video makes the user to click on the link. And, in turn redirecting them to Trojan
loaded sites, where the harmful Trojan gets installed to the victim’s system.
2. ‘Girl killed by husband because she kissed another men’ (August 2014):
According to Bitdefender’s research, a fake video in which the girl was killed by her husband
because, she kissed another man become a viral across the Facebook. This results in attracting
thousands of Facebook users to be victim of spreading viral by clicking on the video. This video
was the footage of an Asian woman almost chopped off by her husband and it attracts the
attention of teenagers.
3. ‘Funny Videos on Facebook’ Scam (July 2014):
This scam started with a funny video of a Facebook friend. When users clicked on the video, they
were redirected to another YouTube link, which includes malicious flashplayer.exe file as a new
update for visitor browser. Once user clicked on the update link, it was able to retrieve confidential
data and stored passwords from victim browser.
4. Sad video of a women dying during a fight Scam (June 2014):
In this scam video there was a woman who was being beaten to death. When users clicked on the
video, it prompted them to share it with their friends then only they were allowed to watch it. But in
reality, it linked users to moneymaking
surveys after sharing.
5. Facebook ads scam (March 2014):
This scam was used by scammer by showing ads on Facebook Ads network for products like
cheap pharmaceuticals, cheap clothes or cheap mobiles (iPhone) etc. When the Facebook users
clicked on the link it redirected them to the malicious websites. Bitdefender has successfully
researched on the scam with finding around 50,000 malicious websites/domains on the Facebook
Ads network.
6. Naked videos of Facebook friends Scam (March 2014):
The spring of 2014 started with a malicious scam, in which more than 1000 Facebook users had
installed Trojan into their systems for the sake of downloading the naked videos of their Facebook
friends. The countries which got most harm due to this scam were found to be UK, Italy, France
Germany and Romania. Trojan as malware was successfully detected by Bitdefender.
7. Guess who viewed your profile scam (February 2014):
This scam was most popular scam of the Facebook for the year 2014. This scam was carried out
by the scammers in February this year. This scam gave false promises to Facebook users, as
ability to know, ‘Who viewed their profile’. Similar to this, other malicious apps like, ‘Reveals exlovers’
or ‘Profile Viewers’ were shown as official Facebook apps by scammers and made number
of victims. This malicious app as Trojan was capable to post to victim profile, on behalf of the
victim and was also capable of sending victims personal data to the attackers.
SHOCKED ??
So, you have to think many times before you click such kind of strange pictures, videos or links. If
by mistake, you have clicked it and a weird app is requesting for permission as shown in picture
below or asking to share the content. Don’t give permission by clicking on Allow button or don’t
share it. Otherwise malicious app similar to this will be able to post on your profile on your behalf.
Many more exciting Facebook applications are involved in such type of scams, such as promise to
add the feature of dislike button or option to make your timeline look more attractive etc. Don’t
trust such kind of apps, because all these are Hacking Scams and can make you victim.
Rejected Nuts want you to get aware of these scams. So in upcoming year 2015, our visitors
should be able to recognise these scams. Now be smart enough to think before you click on such
type of scams videos, pictures or links.
Make sure you share this article with your friends too, so that they don’t become a victim of such
scams in future.
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