Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2011. The figure of 600 million Facebook users and the ‘My 1st Status’ scam are news from that time.
Facebook has reached 600 million users, which makes it the main target of hackers and scammers. A scam that is well established in the United States has now made the jump to Europe, and it has reached Spain.
It works by sending a message that comes from a friend, so we take it for granted that it’s from someone in our contacts. It reads: “My 1st St@tus was: ‘[message]‘. This was posted on ‘[date]‘.” Inside is a link that you should not click under any circumstances, because it redirects you to a malicious app that accesses all of your contacts.
It also takes you to a website that asks for personal details to sign up for an eye-catching service that seems to match your interests, at a fictitious but affordable price, and the money goes straight into the scam company’s pockets.
On top of that, companies like this make a business of selling private information to advertising firms hungry for data of every kind. Facebook in the US has asked users to delete the message from their wall to stop it spreading, because as soon as it appears on your wall, your contacts can click the link.
From now on, social networks have to be used with caution, always avoiding giving out any personal details, although in most cases our private data is already public anyway.
It also goes without saying that most of the profiles supporting humanitarian causes that leave a PayPal account for your donations only serve one cause, and most of the time it isn’t a fair one: they simply line the profile owner’s pocket.
Featured image: Kenneth Lu, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
