Today I’ve been awash with spam on Facebook, in the form of event invitations and instant messages. Being slightly cautious of any links that I can’t actually read (abbreviated links such as bit.ly extensions where it could really be anything), I haven’t clicked on any links that appeared in my chat windows, so couldn’t say for definite whether or not these were hoaxes. However, when the second round of messages and event invitations hit me, it was abundantly clear that there is some sort of virus doing the rounds.
Obviously I haven’t clicked any of the links in the messages or followed the instructions on the event descriptions as to how I’d find out who my biggest profile viewers are, so I can’t comment on what will actually happen, if anything, should you do so. However, something tells me people don’t make ‘friendly’ viruses or take control of your accounts to spread good will.
So here’s what to look out for. This came as an instant message from a peripheral friend from university who I haven’t spoken with in about three years:
“Hey andrew I just found out you were one of my top stalkers, you can find yours at dfg.fbglitch-b.info/?za9tte9“
The first alarm bell was the fact that I’ve not heard from this person in a long time. Secondly she’d called me ‘andrew’ – something that literally no one at university did (I am one of many unfortunate people who are known by a bastardisation of their surname, due to the fact that there were lots of people with the same forename). And finally, the actual message itself was ridiculous – who would really ever say that?
Then followed two invitations to separate events created by different people, but which are occurring at the exact same time, and with the same description. The event is titled “How to find your biggest fans….864ge7d”, although the 7 random characters at the end may change.
Finally, I had another chat message pop up which said something along the lines of “check out this hilarious video of me on saturday night [shortened link]”. Now, given that the person this came from is a bit of a loose cannon at times, and we had in fact been out on an end of season jolly with our rugby team on Saturday, I was half tempted to click on the link. But a quick text to the person from whom this instant message came speedily confirmed that it was indeed a virus or bot of some description that had somehow taken over certain functions of his Facebook account.
So just be aware that these things are out there, and if there is ever any doubt in your mind about the veracity of a link’s origins, it’s best to play it on the safe side, or else you could be risking having your Facebook account hi-jacked.