A Facebook scam that exploits the phone call surrounding new social networking tool Google is making the rounds and may be the ancestor to an extensive phishing scam.
Security vendor Bit Defender told the scam takes the figure of a Face book application called ‘Google Plus Direct Access’. Users are said they will be bound for to a download page for Google if they ‘Like’ the application. In actuality, there is no link to Google and no possibility to obtain an invitation to the service. By clicking ‘Like’, users really share their profile details and contact details with the application’s creators.
The scam features a distribution mechanism that prompts users to invite 50 friends, with the invites finish up on users’ Face book newsfeeds, raising the likelihood that others will also sign up. The scam gathered just about 3300 fans within 24 hours. Although Bit Defender said the scam is “relatively harmless” for the time being, the wholesaler said “there is a opportunity for the app’s creators to effort phishing attacks on its quickly growing fan base by taking advantage of the personal details that it has access to from users having ‘liked’ the page”.
“This scam places of interest the growing partiality for cybercriminals to ‘trendjack’ the most recent news in order to exploit people’s natural interest. From the high number of fans that ‘Google Plus Direct Access’ has gathered in presently 24 hours, it seems that this exacting example has been victorious in achieving its reason of deceptive people into believing there is a Google plus invite to come for them at the other end,” said Catalin Cosoi, head of Bit Defender’s Online Threats Lab. According to Bit Defender statistics, presently under a quarter (24.6%) of Face book users have had some appearance of malicious content posted on their Face book wall by a friend.
“Users require taking real care when using any social network and are guarded not to get drawn into something that more frequently than not is too good to be true.
No comments:
Post a Comment