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Sophos Warns of Spam Outbreak Supposedly from Facebook

According to the researchers from Sophos the security company, unsolicited junk e-mails posing as messages from Facebook, while circulating online, are presently targeting unwitting Web-surfers.

The spurious electronic mail, displaying a header: "You have notifications pending" first greets the recipient and then draws his attention towards certain activity he has overlooked on Facebook.

The activity apparently pertains to four friend requests for the e-mail recipient, the spurious message indicates.

It (spam mail) subsequently encourages the reader towards hitting on links to "See All Notifications" and "Go To Facebook."

Telling more about the just unleashed spam scheme, the security company stated that the web-links led its researchers onto one Canadian pharmaceutical website, which typically presented male-enhancement pills such as Viagra and Cialis. According to the company, the spammers likely were reaping money through diversion of Web-traffic onto the pharmacy site.

Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley for Sophos states that surely the above kinds of web-links may lead end-users onto infinite number of malevolent visits ranging from a phishing website to online site carrying malicious software and so on. He therefore says that users of Facebook simply require being alert. Webpronews.com published this on June 13, 2012.

However, for lessening the possibilities of Facebook members becoming victimized with the above e-mail scam, Sophos released a few security suggestions. These are: one, genuine Facebook notification messages most certainly will address the recipient personally within the header like "Marquisa, you have notifications pending." Spam mails making notifications will not have the recipient's name in the header as the spammers don't know it. They only know the e-mail id of the victim.

Further genuine e-mails are written with slightly less boldness and so use the word 'may' as in "Here's some activity you may have missed on Facebook" unlike false notices, which flatly write, "Here's some activity you have missed on Facebook."

Hence, according to Sophos, in case anyone gets such a false notification missive from Facebook, he should not only not follow its web-links, but transfer it into his inbox's spam folder, inform Facebook about the e-mail as well as delete it permanently without delay.

Related article: Sobig.f Worm After three Years of Manipulation

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