Posts Tagged ‘Market Research’

Osama bin Laden leaked video scam rises again on Facebook

Published by pratyushkp on May 18th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Image via CrunchBase

A new version of the various Facebook scams we have seen since the death of Osama bin Laden has emerged.

Naked Security reader Sampath sent us a tip-off about the latest variation he had seen of a viral scam that poses as a video of the killing of Osama bin Laden:

OSAMA KILLING REAL VIDEO LEAKED
OMG! real video of Osama Bin Laden being killed. Video leaked by wikileaks. Watch it before it get deleted.

A link in the message may, at first glance, appear to point to the YouTube website but in fact points to a similar-looking Indian domain name ending in “.in”.

If you make the mistake of clicking on the link you are taken to a third-party webpage, which poses as a security verification check from YouTube.

Quite why anyone would imagine that typing in the words “real video” is any form of security verification is beyond me.

But what’s happening here is that when you submit the so-called CAPTCHA text you are unwittingly publishing the message to your own Facebook wall. This spreads the message virally to your Facebook friends, and helps spread the scam further on behalf of the bad guys.

The scammers make their money by tricking you into taking an online survey. They earn commission for each person they managed to complete it, and you might be the sort of person who is tempted to answer the questionnaire in the belief that you’ll get to see a video of the Osama bin Laden being killed.

Remember – the real YouTube would never ask you to complete an online survey before watching a video, and that scams like this are rife across Facebook. As long as Facebook users keep falling for scams like this, they’ll carry on being a problem.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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Unfollowed Me rogue application spreads virally on Twitter

Published by pratyushkp on May 1st, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Once again Twitter users are finding themselves hit by a fast-infecting attack, more commonly encountered by their Facebook-using cousins: a rogue application spreading virally across the network.

Thousands of Twitter users have fallen into the trap of allowing rogue third-party applications access their Twitter accounts, believing that it would tell them how many people have unfollowed them.

42 people have unfollowed me, find out how many have unfollowed you

A typical message reads:

58 people have unfollowed me, find out how many have unfollowed you: [LINK] #rw2011 #duringsexplease #youneedanasswhoopin

See the hashtags? They appear to be currently trending phrases on Twitter – presumably the rogue applications are using them in the messages they spam out in an attempt to trick more users into clicking on the links.

If you do click on the link you are asked to give authorisation for a third-party application to access your Twitter account.

Rogue application on Twitter

Don’t, whatever you do, press the “Allow” button. If you do, then a third party is now capable of tweeting messages in your name to all of your Twitter followers – which spreads the scam virally across Twitter and may result in one of your online friends also having their account compromised.

So, how do the scammers make money? That’s the next piece of the jigsaw.

You’re anxious to find out who has unfollowed you on Twitter. The scammers take advantage of that by presenting a webpage which looks as if it’s about to reveal that information – but is actually designed to make you take an online survey instead.

Rogue application survey scam

The scammers make money for each survey that is completed.

If you were unfortunate enough to grant one of these rogue applications access to your Twitter account, revoke its rights immediately by going to the Twitter website and visiting Settings/Connections and revoking the offending app’s rights.

Revoke rogue app rights

(Note that the scammers are using a variety of different applications – so you may see a different name from the one I picture above).

Don’t make it easy for scammers to make money in this way, and always exercise caution about which third party apps you allow to connect with your social networking accounts.

If you’re on Twitter and want to learn more about threats, be sure to follow Naked Security’s team of writers.

Source : – http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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Over 10 Million Scammed On Facebook

Published by pratyushkp on April 10th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Were invited to a bogus event

Spammers have invited over 10 million Facebook users to fake events in yet another attempt to generate income from online survey scams according to a report by the IT security and data protection firm Sophos. Even as we file this report, the scam is in progress and several thousand unwitting Facebook users are falling prey to it.

One of the event known as “Who blocked you from his friend list?” has already tricked over 165,000 people into signing-up, with an astounding 10.3 million users still deciding whether or not to respond. Scammers embed instructions into the ‘More info‘ section of the event’s summary and this convinces Facebook users to unwittingly visit the webpages for online surveys or competitions, which are a source of revenue for the scammers by means of commission. Sometimes, users are asked to provide a mobile phone number, and if the user is naive enough to provide it, he/she will most probably end up getting signed up for an expensive premium rate service.

Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, Graham Cluley said, “These spammed-out event invitations and links to survey scams are one of the biggest nuisances on Facebook right now, impacting millions of users every day. It would be great if Facebook was being more proactive in shutting down these obviously bogus events, as currently it’s far too easy for the scammers to fill their pockets through schemes like this.”

In case you are affected by this scam, then you must cancel your reservation for the event. You must also notify your friends that you have shared a bogus link with them and/or invited them to a fake event. In case you have submitted your mobile phone number, you must contact your mobile service provider and inform them to keep any bogus charges from appearing in your mobile account.

The moral of the story is that Facebook users must beware of such suspicious events and think twice before accepting invitations from an unknown source.

Source : http://www.techtree.com/India/Techtree_Notes/Over_10_Million_Scammed_On_Facebook/551-115050-889.html

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