Facebook Scams and How to Deal With Them

Posted on: Fri, 04/08/2011 - 08:01 — us104_techdish

Ahh! I didn't mean to click on that link on my wall in Facebook, dagnabbit! G- to R-rated variations of this statement have been heard by your computer, and perhaps others in the room with you, if you have ever been so unfortunate as to accidentally clicking on something you shouldn't have in Facebook.

This week's TechDish is brought to you by the kind folks over at Facecrooks, a watchdog group that has tasked themselves with detecting and reporting various scams around "The Bookdom", so you and I can be aware of them, and act accordingly.

Why are we so susceptible to these scams? In this author's humble opinion, I think we tend to see Facebook as a "safe area", free from the spam/malware/phishing/etc garbage that we have to worry about in our email accounts. Problem is, we tend to let our guard down on Facebook and we can get hosed quite thoroughly.

What can happen if I do click on a scam?

Most of these scams, at least the one's we've seen to-date, only cause you to lose a little face and make you feel a little silly in front of your sphere of influence on The Book. You click a link, an application suddenly wants access to your profile, and the next thing you know, your very own profile has beamed that same link out to all of your Facebook friends faster than Scotty ever could have.

However. We've been seeing worse things happening—these scams have been known to download malware/spyware/viruses to your computer, take full control and lock you out of your facebook profile; and in some instances, get you to enter your credit card or other information, which, in review, is bad, very bad.

How do I avoid these scams?

From Your Ultimate Guide to Facebook Scams and How to Deal with Them.

• When in doubt, don't click the link, "like" things, or add the application.
  Anytime you do this, you are opening a door that a malicious program could enter through. So, give it some thought before you click.
• Don't accept friend requests from people you've never heard of.
  This one does touch a little closer to home; we all feel a little increase in ego when we get a friend request after all! But take some time to check the person out before blindly clicking "Accept" on those friend requests. And, if in doubt and you want to be super sure, send the person in question a quick Facebook message! If they get back to you, they're probably real; if not, forget 'em—it's a scam.
• Keep your anti virus and anti spyware software up to date.
  This isn't new information, and there's plenty of reasons beside Facebook to keep this up to date, but now you have one more reason to add to the heaping pile.
• Tweak your Facebook security settings
  Things like making your Facebook browsing secure are a good place to start, as well as settings to block out the ability to be tagged in photos, who can add you as a friend, and who can post on your wall.
• Make sure your Facebook account has a strong password.
  Hey this isn't new news either but make sure any account where you have a lot to lose if someone were to gain access to it—be it your bank, email, Facebook, shopping sites, etc—is locked down nice and tight with a good strong password. If you find yourself thinking "typing this long of a password is so inconvenient", think of the inconvenience you may have to deal with if someone else were to guess that your password was a combination of your dog's name, your wife's favorite color and your anniversary date.

If you want to stay on top of all this and more, be sure to check out Facecrooks, or, better yet, Like them on Facebook to stay up to date with the latest scams as they are discovered!

Next week we'll be talking about steps of action you can take if you have been a victim of a scam on Facebook, so you can get your account cleaned up and back to however normal it once was. Stay tuned!