Photoshopped image scam used in rogue Facebook app trap

Facebook users were put under fire on Monday by a brace of new threats, one of which spreads through a link disseminated through the Facebook Chat application. An estimated 600,000 people have already clicked onto the link, which falsely promises to show them a funny Photoshopped image of themselves. In reality users install a …

[Anonymous Coward]

and ......

and queue the mass of posts all saying what a piece of crap facebook is and how the great unwashed who all use it get what they deserve for using facebook !

[Arctic fox]

Well I'll be blowed! You must have......

........been reading my mind.

[Anonymous Coward]

1st in that que

......what a piece of crap facebook is and how the great unwashed who all use it get what they deserve for using facebook !

You said it.

[mark 63]

sad but true

that is all

[Elmer Phud]

and

and those who never seem to have any problems with using Facebook, despite all the warnings of doom and gloom.

[Fred Flintstone]

Yup - IaaS

Idiots as a Service..

[Matt Hawkins]

Easy

Simple rule to avoid this sort of thing

1) Never install a Facebook app. They are either malware or pointless junk.

There we go. Easy.

If you are vain enough to care who is viewing your profile or really want to see your head morphed into a dog then you deserve everything you get.

[Ashley Adams]

Whos stalking me apps!

I always ignore/block/report these stupid "profile view" apps and try and educate my friends not to be fooled by them. However the other day I got a notification that i'd been tagged in a photo. When I went to look it was of some random advert for a facebook app. Not only that, the photo caption named me as one of the top 5 stalkers of this friend!! I hit the roof!!

Although I could untag myself, I couldn't do anything about the slanderous caption so I sent a very angry message to the "friend", reported both the app and the photo and then unfriended the person anyway since I hadn't looked at their profile in a long time and wouldn't miss them.

I wish there was a wide spread announcement made that all "how many views" or "whos stalking me" apps are fake, will never work and if they do spit out names and stats theyre all made up!

[TeeCee]

"I hit the roof!!"

Er, why?

How the hell do you react if anything seriously meaningful goes wrong? e.g. Breaking a nail or losing a penny down the sofa....

[Anonymous Coward]

@TeeCee

Cut him some slack, it might have been a low roof.

[The Alpha Klutz]

"unfriended the person anyway since I hadn't looked at their profile in a long time"

Yeah, stick it to the man. I bet he'll think twice before trying to be your friend again. Fight the power.

[A J Stiles]

cue

queue = line of people waiting their turn for something.

cue = trigger for another action, marker; stick for playing pool; to position a gramophone record so that the beginning of the song is directly under the stylus.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but in this case

they both work. As proven out by the next googleplex of replies.

[David Precious]

"No malware is getting spread through the ruse, at least at present."

Um, no malware? I'd say the "rogue application which sends messages to their contacts via the social network's IM feature, thus continuing the infection cycle" could certainly be considered malware, even if it does no direct damage to the host or attempt to steal information at present.

[Tom 13]

But that's not malware,

that's the planned functionality.

[Gordon Barret]

Yes it is

It is obviously malware because of what it is doing.

By your definition every other piece of malware/trojan/virus or whatever is "not malware because that's the planned functionality".

You are so wrong.

[Dave Murray]

No malware is getting spread through the ruse?

"In reality users install a rogue application which sends messages to their contacts via the social network's IM feature, thus continuing the infection cycle."

So what exactly is your definition of malware? It is installing an application which does something the user doesn't want / know about and that is malware by my definition.

[Greg J Preece]

Did anyone else...

...misread "clicks" as "dicks" and still see it as appropriate?

[Gordon Barret]

Nope ...

... not me!

[Buzzword]

No malware is getting spread....

This is a perfect example of a Cloud Virus. How long will it be before we see the equivalent of Word macro viruses spreading through Google Docs?

[Anonymous Coward]

good and evil...

The thing with Facebook, As a competent user of computers and the internet, I see facebook for what it is, a very convenient way for the computer user with less than perfect technical abilities to communicate with other family members and friends.

Since the rise of facebook I get less and less hassle from family members who have broke the email client again or setting up anti spam... nagging at them about clicking on exe attachments etc... they all use the messaging service on facebook. and tell everyone to "inbox me" even better they use a crapple judas phone with a facebook app.... gets them off the computer altogether :)

facebook really has its good points, its a perfect platform to share family photos and holiday snaps, pics of your dog etc.... it saves you having a 20mb attachment to download (not so much an issue these days) as someone emails you a TIFF of a scanned photo of the dog...

on my own favebook page, every stupid game gets blocked, every stupid app gets blocked, the only thing I get on my wall are status updates... in its own perverse way, it makes my own personal facebook experience a pleasure, even more so when you realise you never have to give family your email address any more and will never get another "your friend xxxxxx thinks you would like this web page" or "your friend has sent you a greetings card.. click here to view it" in your email inbox again !!! yay !

[Pascal Monett]

Re:"facebook really has its good points"

Indeed it does. Principally it has diminished the amount of crap I get in my Inbox and replaced the spam with but a few Twitter, Paypal and Facebook alerts.

It would seem that spam and con artists are targeting Facebook and Twitter now, and that really helps me since I do not have an account on any of those sites.

So, for the fact that Facebook is drawing the morons to it and therefor the miscreants as well, I thank it for existing. Apart from that, I despise it and its maker.

[Anonymous Coward]

No new technology required

>which falsely promises to show them a funny Photoshopped image of themselves

I only need a mirror for this

[klossner]

Bogus infection rate

The reported infection rate of "88,888 per hour" is clearly not to be believed.

[Mike Flugennock]

there's a (cr)app for that

I use Facebook very sparingly, for stuff like promoting my blog and my art, and have my info locked down tighter than Mandela's old cell. I've only "friended" people I actually know personally, and have my app preferences set to "shoot on sight"; from the beginning, knowing what I knew, I went on the assumption that the phrase "rogue app" was a redundant expression.

[Winkypop]

"Such survey scams are all too common on Facebook."

Is the word "survey" redundant?

Isn't FB just one giant scam?

[Chris 116]

Facebook...

Kiss my assbook.com