Facebook amid New Spamming Campaign

Spammers are circulating new sort of spam e-mails to the users of popular social networking site "Facebook". However this new spamming campaign does not appear to steal the passwords and usernames of the people, but still, it is potentially dangerous, as reported by Mashable on May 4, 2009.

The scam involves a spam e-mail that contains just a hyperlink "justfuns.in". On clicking the hyperlink, some of the recipients found themselves on Viagra ads websites, whereas some others said that they were forwarded to travel search engines.

On the other hand, some vigilant Facebook users did smart act on receiving the e-mail. One of them said that a friend forwarded him the spam e-mail, but to his surprise, he doesn't find any subject line in the e-mail and the mail was consisting of just a hyperlink. Thus, he deleted it. According to him, users should be alert of such suspicious e-mails.

Moreover, this e-mail scam appears quite widespread as clear from the fact that "justfuns.in" reportedly remained the topmost search trend in Google for nearly an hour. Though, it is extremely difficult to figure out the exact victims of this latest scam.

Security experts noted that such incidents are becoming repetitive, causing damage to the Facebook users and their accounts. It was just in the final week of April 2009 when the same social networking site was targeted by "Fbaction.net" and "Fbstarter.com" in quick succession. Several Facebook users are thought to have fallen victim of those attacks.

Security personnel informed that as no predetermined goal seems to be associated with "justfuns.in" spam campaign, it is just giving rise to confusion among the Facebook users. Consequently, the social networking site should take appropriate measures to cut down the possibility of such a scam in future, which might cause severe damage to its user community as well as its reputation.

Meanwhile, Facebook has asked its users to remain aware of such phishing campaigns and has issued a few set of rules that should be followed while being online. Also, the website has urged users to use updated browser featuring an anti-phishing blacklist.

All-in-all, Facebook should tighten its security so as to avoid any further damage to its reputation.

Related article: Facebook Users Should be Careful of a Computer Virus

» SPAMfighter News - 5/11/2009