Yet another ‘virus’ is propagating itself throughout Facebook, but this one is slightly more sinister than just offering free vouchers for Tesco or ASDA. The social network says it is looking into reports that images of a pornographic and violent nature have been posted to its website.
It is thought that the images showing up in users’ news feeds are being spread via a “linkspam virus” which tempts members to click on a seemingly innocuous story link, with Facebook’s latest statement saying the root of the problem is malicious JavaScript that some users were tricked into pasting to their browser URL bar.
As you’d expect, Twitter has become the medium of choice for voicing opinions on this, with one user remarking: “Discovered a new porn site, it’s called Facebook.” Other users complained they had seen pictures of mutilated animals and people, with some people even going so far as to deactivate their accounts as a consequence. If you are thinking of doing this for any reason, be sure to backup your Facebook account first.
Quite who is behind the spam attack is unclear at this point, although several news and technology sites suggest that it may be Anonymous, the online hacktivist group who had earlier in the year threatened to take down Facebook on November 5th.
Could it be Anonymous? Maybe this was their plan all along? Instead of physically stopping Facebook from working or deleting all of the content, perhaps their goal was to instigate the willing departure of the 700 million users by making the social network an inhabitable environment?