Facebook Spammers Hijacking Accounts, Chats

If you use Facebook chat, be on the lookout for suspicious messages from your friends.

According to AllFacebook, spammers are hijacking Facebook accounts and sending potentially malicious links via Facebook chat.

AllFacebook's Jackie Cohen noticed on Monday that one of her Facebook friends was sending her links promising free prizes. "No way Jackie," read the text accompanying one such link, "Facebook is glitching rite now and giving out free gifts quick look at this." The strange part, Cohen realized, was that her friend was not signed on to Facebook at the time. The account seemed to be sending these messages autonomously.

Cohen followed one of the links to a marketing survey that offered prizes like a $1,000 Walmart gift card or a free iPhone 4. "Completing them [the surveys] wastes your time, put you at risk or contracting malware and receiving spam, while the spammer earns a commission.," writes Cohen.

The screenshot (below) shows what one of these pesky chat messages might look like. If you do receive one of these links, do not click it.

LOOK: [via AllFacebook, hat tip Switched]

Comments

[davidbutlerjr]

07:20 PM on 02/03/2011

The Hijacking of social networking pages is becoming threatening to its users. First we saw it happen on Myspace now it is happening to many users of Facebook. Not only is this a threat to those who have their page hijacked but also to their friends. I believe awareness needs to be raised to protect the users of social networking sites. With proper education, we can tell users to ignore phony ads and to only type their passwords in secure web pages.

[Paul Engle]

09:17 PM on 02/02/2011

This happened to me and my friends as well. Really up.

[J0E1]

02:08 PM on 02/02/2011

If everyone had common sense, 99% of "attacks" wouldn't work.

[ls1z28chris]

02:23 PM on 02/02/2011

If everyone had common sense, 99% of the people who work in IT would be out of a job.

[JavaSavant]

04:46 PM on 02/03/2011

"Hello, IT department. Did you try turning it off and on again?"

- The IT Crowd