Facebook Scams

[Nick]

Thanks to some unscrupulous opportunists, the back and forth between the king of social networks, Facebook, and the pretender to the throne, Google+, continues. The search giant's latest foray into social networking is currently in a closed "field trial," and invitations are such a hot commodity that they are even being sold on eBay. Beware of Google+ invites appearing on Facebook, however.

A prank making the rounds on Facebook uses a technique similar to "like-jacking," in which tricksters use a disguised link or button to get you to "Like" their page, after which unwanted updates will appear on your newsfeed. In this case, scammers promise a Google+ invite if you click the "Like" button on their Facebook Page. Clicking, however, only adds you to the spammer's list, and sends unwanted marketing posts to your Facebook timeline.

One such page, titled "Get Google Plus Invitation FREE" tells would-be Google+ invitees, "If you need GooglePlus invitations... Please leave your email... Thanks." A surprising number of unsuspecting people have actually put their email addresses up on the public page for anyone—including spammers and identity thieves—to see. PCMag.com strongly recommends against publicly posting your email address; not surprisingly, I posted on the Facebook page using a test email account and did not receive any Google+ invites.

Users should "remain diligent about the sites that you visit, the links that you click, and the pages that you 'Like' on social media sites," according to Sam Masiello, chief security officer at email marketing firm ReturnPath. "You're typically allowing access to more of your sensitive information about yourself than you are aware." He also notes that this can result in "deeper access to data such as credit card information and more which could easily lead to identity theft."

In all, a Facebook search for "Google Plus" (the math addition symbol is not recognized) turned up 31 such pages. Each used some form of the Google logo, for an authentic look, to differing degrees of sophistication. Invitations are not only appearing on Facebook; beware of those that also show up in your email inbox.

For more, see PCMag's full hands-on with Google+, the slideshow below, as well as 6 Things Google+ Can Do That Facebook Can't and Social Networking Showdown: 8 Facebook Features Google+ Doesn't Have (Yet). On privacy, see Google+ Privacy: Has Google Learned Its Lesson?

 

[FYIfloors]

Wow thats nuts, you've really gotta be careful huh? I think back to when I was a little girl the only thing I needed to look out for was strange men with a bag of lollies, now look where technology has taken us!!!!

Thanks heaps Nick, its nice to have someone with the knowledge and who has our backs

 

[Twomly]

Indeed my misses spends all her time on facebook well when she's home, thanks Nick. Although summit happened the other night which I'd never seen before, suddenly her pc starts really running slow and pages are strugling to load, so she comes offline and thinks I'll shut down and restart, back on and so far so good until she goes to click on a shortcut on the desktop which instead of the click on one item it seems to select everything at once to open, now she cries out for my help, so I try thinking silly woman what are you talking about same thing happens, then I notice this icon on her tool bar flashing so I put the mouse pointer over it and it says she has files that need to be copied to disk, so I ask her do you have files that need to be put onto disk no she says, right lets do system restore back one month. Done that all is ok icon gone can click on things one at a time, but now its behaving like the shift key is permanently held down so typing anything is just pointless. Ran AVG it found some sort of virus can't remember what it was called but it got rid of it then ran registry mechanic which fixed 3 errors. And now its ok.

 

[Nick]

you're still infected follow the instructions in the ICU forum

http://www.flooringforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=650