Fake Facebook Spam Going Around

Facebook hackers have been trying to arouse user's curiosity by leveraging their excitement about getting a notification by a scam mail, but this time it alerts about a new message, as per the reports by ZDNET on August 31, 2011.

This email version read on like this "Facebook sent you a notification" and "You have 1 lost message on Facebook, to recover a message follow the link below:"

The facebook email scam tries to entice users into clicking links in order to reportedly recover a lost facebook message for leading users to unsafe websites.

Users were tricked to click on the harmful link. Consequently, they are exposed to a double- barrelled malware. First of all, they are provided a fake Adobe Flash update. After that clicking on the link opens a hidden iFrame, which then installs data from a remote server hosting the Blackhole Exploit Kit.

Facebook is said to have nearly 750 million active users and many of them cannot bear the brunt of a lost message and feel curious to recover it.

The mails look reliable enough if casually inspected as the malware-authors use an authentic Facebook template.

But, the mail is different from the authentic ones as they do not have Facebook profile photos. The fake mail also does not have the recipient email address.

It is worth observing that people behind this scam could change where the link takes them to. They can change where user will be redirected depending on what kind of browser or operating system is running and where you are located.

The objective of the hacker is to drive more traffic towards some websites. This is how the hacker earns his/her money- a commission for every survey completed, every product bought, or every account hacked. They also use them to spread malware and extract private details.

Security experts suggested to ignore this mail and if some user has received this lost message, it must be marked as spam. Also, make your friends aware by posting about the scam on your Facebook wall.

Related article: Fake Spam Mail Announces Australian PM’s Heart Attack

» SPAMfighter News - 9/10/2011