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back to article False Facebook charge group used to spread malware

A false rumour suggesting that Facebook is to start charging is being used to bait malware traps. Thousands of disgruntled punters, angry at the $4.99 a month charge for using the social networking site that will supposedly kick in from June (or July, according to other false reports) have been induced to visit "protest group …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Facebook's Fault

    If facebook would actually sit up and take notice this would not be such an issue. They don't seem to be taking any direct action, I haven't seen any notices/ alerts of pop up's from them notifying users that this is a scam.

    This if I remember correctly was the same issue with RockYou.com fiasco, Facebook didn't at any point come out and say oh by the way you have a RockYou app on your account, RockYou had a breach and so you might want to change your passwords.

    This is FAIL FAIL FAIL, its as is the RockYou fiasco has been pushed under the carpet, I do wonder how many people are still in the dark.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      You don't remember correctly.

      >"This if I remember correctly was the same issue with RockYou.com fiasco, Facebook didn't at any point come out and say oh by the way you have a RockYou app on your account, RockYou had a breach and so you might want to change your passwords."

      The reason they didn't come out and say that is because it isn't true. You didn't have a RockYou account if you only used the FB apps; you only have a RockYou account if you signed up separately on RockYou's pages, away from the FB site. Take a look at

      http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/14/rockyou-hack-security-myspace-facebook-passwords/

      for some snaps of the signup pages.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    I love the protest groups

    I love hearing how angry people get when they believe that facebook is going to start charging to use it's service.

    They just don't seem to realise that doing so will be suicide as rival social network sites will be very happy to accept refugee members from facebook!

    Those people who were duped into believing this deserve everything they get!

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    1. MadonnaC
      Reply Icon
      Unhappy

      I would like to agree but....

      we don't need another spam/ddos zombie on the internet. Unfortunately, the clueless do need to be protected, even if it's only for our sake.

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  3. Number6

    Paying for Facebook

    Being a Social Networking Freetard, if Facebook want to charge me, I'll go elsewhere or even just not bother. I wonder what I'd do with all that free time?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Grenade

      What part of "this is a hoax" did you miss?

      Why are you responding to an article about a hoax by taking the hoax at face value and letting us know what you intend to do about it? You're just the kind of sucker who goes and joins up to these stupid groups for stupid reasons like "just in case what if it's true this time?".

      That's not a "freetard". That's a "numpty".

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  4. Skrrp
    Go

    The reason Facebook does nothing ...

    is because these troll groups use an incendiary headline to grab the idiots. Idiots join groups, flash the headline around for all their friends to see. Friends join groups ... ad so infinitum.

    So, what does Facebook want to do about all this?

    Apart from all those tasty pageviews, ad impressions and clicks I mean ...

    Facebook, like TV, is the supplier. The customers are the ad vendors. The users are simply the product.

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  5. Alastair 7

    The problem for Facebook

    is that if they removed these groups it would make the paranoid 'tards even more agitated- Facebook is shutting down our protests! Then they'd each set up about five separate groups campaigning against this latest outrage, Facebook shuts them down, the process repeats...

    Of course, this wouldn't be a problem for Facebook if people weren't so stupid.

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  6. Charlie Oscar

    Err

    yeah this is nothing new,

    this kind of spam and i suspect attack have been doing the rounds on every social site, from facebook to habbo

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    1. Pandy06269
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      MSN?

      The old classic was on MSN - "add this user to your profile and MSN will remain free for you, if you don't you'll have to pay £10 a month." The "user" was obviously a scam account.

      Or the one I liked best, "send this e-mail to 10 friends, your MSN icon will turn blue and will remain free for you" - yeah, because MSN is just powerful it can read every e-mail traversing the net and knows that you've sent 10...

      Even funnier was the amount of people who actually believed it and kept asking when their man would turn blue.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    That's last week's scam, this week it's "profile watchers".

    There are dozens of groups springing up with "instructions" that read like

    > " Invite everyone you know. If over 75% of them accept the invites, we will email you a link to the application. "

    One of them went straight for the direct approach:

    > " We've decided to make the profile watcher a desktop application" (instead of an FB app) " click here to download the installer".

    So some combination of compiling lists of addresses for spamming or phishing later, plus attempting to punt malware. Needless to say there's no such thing as a profile watcher really (unless you can figure out how to XSS or otherwise bust through the FBJS protections, in which case FB would be on it like a ton of bricks the moment they noticed.) Let's be careful out there, folks!

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  8. John F***ing Stepp

    I love being such a Neandertal

    That I don't even use IM.

    Facebook? Twitter? Too much like work.

    (Sure I can touch type but last week I fed my keyboard a dose of fruit juice; I guess we all know where that goes. . . Avoid these keys in the future and it is alt-65 for a, and that sort of thing.)

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  9. Winkypop Silver badge
    Grenade

    Remember

    These are just facebook users.

    Not real peoples.

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  10. Kurgan
    FAIL

    A fool and his computer...

    A fool and his computer are easily pwned.

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  11. Elmer Phud
    Headmaster

    Several born every minute

    This hasn't really got anything to do with Faceache.

    It's scammers relying on the way that humans are prone to panic overreact and panic first before engaging rational thought and having a browse around Google to find out if it's at all true.

    As these are often the same people who will cry 'off with thier heads' and 'something must be done, think of the children!' they deserve all they get ripped off for.

    I get a tad pissed off constantly referring people I know (and usually the same ones) to Snopes after they spam all and sundry about an email they got from the usual chain of bloke down the pubs dogs friends owners mate who heard it from a cabbie who overheard a conversation etc. etc.

    Jimmy Edwards as I can't be arsed to work out where all the apostrophe's go.

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  12. Znort666

    I'm surprised...

    that Zuckerberg was unable to use his prophetic abilities to foresee this...

    This is as Elmer Phud says just a great example of human nature. Panic, react and at some point later on think about it and realise you have once again been conned/scammed/shown to be a blinkered sheep.

    I recently had about 12 copies of the Sony Ericsson "sweet" laptop deal, send it to 10 people and receive a free laptop...straight away alarm bells rang so I did a quick Google search and lo and behold...it was fake. We are to quick to trust everything that is said on the internet, if someone came to your door and said they would give you a laptop if you gave them 10 friends names/addresses you would tell them where to get off, so why are we so quick to believe all these scams etc???

    Oh by the way...in August The Reg is going to charge for it use. Go to www.downloadavirustoyourpcandspendloadstoremovescarewareandviruses.net

    to sign a petition against this...

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