1 Daily Tune
It’s been almost 1 month since my last post on this blog and I miss writing about scams. The pause happened not because I did not have the time to do it, or that I did not have what to write about, or because I was over this project, but because of legal actions that I might run into should I continue. I thought I could find a way around it but at this moment it’s not possible. I hope I will be able to continue posting on this blog, but until then, I want to recommend to you a cool new music blog where I started posting:
1 Daily Tune
Stay socially safe and thanks for your visit.
First scams to surface on Pinterest
As first scams appear on Pinterest, users use this social network learn the hard lesson on how to spot fake pins. Both Trend Micro and Bitdefender wrote about survey scams on Pinterest, scams almost identical to Facebook ones. The text advertises the same old free gift card and the process is almost identical with the difference being that on Pinterest you have to ‘pin’ the scam and not ‘share’ it. The result is, of course, a survey scam.
With these 2 first examples, I am sure that all the brand names that have been illegally used to promote scams on Facebook will also be used on Pinterest. A couple of years after the first scams surfaced on Facebook, the company is still struggling to keep it under control and some examples, like the ‘sick baby photo hoaxes’, prove that there are a lot of things to improve.
The relatively young social network Pinterest should learn from this lesson and pay more attention to this issue. Developing anti-spam measures to keep pinboards clean will pay off in the future and will make their users safe and pleased.
Stay socially safe and do not forget to visit our Facebook page available here or our Twitter account here (@scamwiki) – ARM.
How to deal with a scammy Facebook Event
Starting with the Coca Cola scam and continuing with the McDonald’s fake voucher and the ALDI fake giveaway, this week has seen a new kind of Facebook scams making a breakthrough. As more and more users fall for these new scams involving Facebook Events that promote non-existent vouchers/gift cards, there are only two things that I can do. First to report them hoping that users will reach this blog, read about them and avoid going through the scam process. Even once the damage is done I can still help users with one thing. With steps on how to clean their profiles and to warn their friends about the threat. Let’s begin.
First thing is how to see all the Facebook Events you have joined so that you can view weather this issue applies to you too. There are multiple options to do that but the easiest one is to click on ‘Events’ in the left part of your Facebook page, right under FAVORITES.
The Events to which you are either ‘Going’ to or ‘Maybe going’ to will appear there. Events to which you are ‘Not going’ will not be shown for obvious reasons. Once you have identified the scammy Event you need to remove yourself from it. To do this first click on the name of the Event which will open the Event page.
You can not delete yourself from a Facebook Event, you can only set your profile as ‘Not Going’. In order to do this you will need to click on the ‘Going’ drop-down menu in the upper right part and select ‘Not Going’ as you can see below.
Once that is completed you need to go to your Facebook Timeline and check if you have any posts there mentioning the Event. In case you Shared it, a post will be there. For all posts that have any reference to the fake Event you have to delete it using the ‘x’ option from the upper right part of the post.
So at this moment you have managed to clean your profile. The next question is how to revoke the Event invitations sent to your Friends. Well, there is a problem with this one. I did not find any way to do that. And googling did not help either. I guess this is because Facebook Event invitations are similar to Facebook Messages and it cannot be undone.
This leaves 2 options. One would be to send a message to each of your friends and inform them of the situation and make sure that they do not access the scam. The disadvantage is that there is no option to send a Facebook message to all friends at once and selecting each user does take some time. The advantage is that this method will increase the odds of them not clicking on your invitation in the first place. If you remember the people you have invited, then you should send the message only to them and save some time.
The second option is to create a Facebook Post explaining the issue/scam and asking your friends to delete the invitation from you without clicking on it. The disadvantage is that the Post might not be seen by your friends unless is gets enough Likes or Comments to reach a Top position in their News Feed. The advantage is that it takes you just a couple of minutes to do this.
Either way you choose, you should try to warn your friends about the scam especially if you accessed it.
On a side note, I can see that some of the Events that I reported in my previous posts are still up and doing very well. The Event from the first screen shot in this blog entry almost reached 500k users. But the Event from below has managed to gather almost 2 Million users with 77k actually Going to it.
Indeed, some Events has been deleted at this point but not all of them. It seems that users still have this kind of threat to watch for.
Stay socially safe and do not forget to visit our Facebook page available here or our Twitter account here (@scamwiki) – ARM.
Free ALDI Gift Voucher Giveaway!(Limited Time Only) – Facebook Scam
Scam text:
Free ALDI Gift Voucher Giveaway!(Limited Time Only)
Scam post:
First sighting:
February 2012
Scam type:
Survey Scam
Scam process:
Scammers have revealed this week two almost identical scams which take advantage of Facebook’s Events. At first it was the ‘Coca Cola Giveaway ( 24 Pack Limited Offer )‘ scam followed by the ‘McDonalds Free Vouchers ( Limited Offer )‘ one. In the blog post regarding the latter one, I was asking myself what would be the next company name to be illegally used. And the answer came when I found the ALDI scam. I saw this scam at the same time as the McDonald’s one, but it was quickly removed by Facebook. Now it is back up and it is building momentum. Let’s see some pics.
And this is the second Event to which the user is directed by the Link inserted into the first Event.
The link from this Event is to an external website which has a survey scam.
In the previous two scams a website was used to link the two Events and that offered scammers some advantages. This time they did not go through all that trouble and linked Events directly. That and the company name used are the only differences between these scams. The fact that the ‘Free ALDI Gift Voucher Giveaway!(Limited Time Only)’ uses only 4 Events is not relevant as I am sure that more will be added if necessary.
Having identical texts and spreading technique, there can be no doubt that all 3 scams have been created by the same person/crew. These 2 elements are what has brought success for scammers as I am sure that a lot of users have been tricked by the promise of a free voucher/gift card.
But that should also be their downfall as it should be fairly easy for Facebook to detect these Events and the Pages that create them. And from there to removal it’s only one step. But if this doesn’t happen soon, I bet a new variant will pop-up within 24 hours.
For users that have accessed this scam you can read my new blog entry on How to deal with a scammy Facebook Event
Stay socially safe and do not forget to visit our Facebook page available here or our Twitter account here (@scamwiki).
Update to the McDonalds Free Vouchers ( Limited Offer ) Facebook Scam
Almost 24 hours ago I wrote here a blog post about a Facebook scam which claimed to offer ‘McDonalds Free Vouchers’. The scam did not use a Facebook app or a browser extension or any kind of script. Instead, it used Facebook Events to spread among users as each new user had to invite his/her friends to the Event in order to receive the non-existent reward. Although a little bit late, Facebook’ Security filters usually manage to remove scams within 1 or 2 days and in some cases within hours. But not this time. In this case, it is the exact opposite as the scam is becoming even more popular.
As you could read in the blog post, the scam involved 2 Facebook Pages that were used to create 13 Events each. Both Pages are still up and all their 26 Events can still be accessed. In addition, a new Page has been created which has only one Event attached to it. But this one boasts almost 300k users going /maybe going / just invited to it. It simply dwarfs the other ones which average around 20k for each Event.
Pretty impressive, isn’t it? And one last thing to add. This time the scammers managed to keep the final part of the scam alive, as yesterday the website which I believed hosted a survey scam was unavailable. This time the website it is accessible and it is a indeed survey scam.
Stay socially safe and do not forget to visit our Facebook page available here or our Twitter account here (@scamwiki).
Related articles
- McDonalds Free Vouchers ( Limited Offer ) – Facebook Scam (scamwiki.wordpress.com)
McDonalds Free Vouchers ( Limited Offer ) – Facebook Scam
Scam text:
McDonalds Free Vouchers ( Limited Offer )
Scam post:
First sighting:
February 2012
Scam type:
Survey Scam
Scam process:
It all starts with a friend inviting you to a Facebook Event which promises ‘McDonalds Free Vouchers’, which is of course a ‘Limited Offer only’. If you decide to check out the Event you will find instructions on how to get the free prize and the voucher being detailed as a ‘ Free $100 McDonalds Voucher’.
This is the first part of a double Facebook Event scam. Scammers didn’t place the other event’s link on the page. Instead they use a link to an external website that they control. As that website only performs a re-direct, it can easily be modified to direct to a new Event once the current one is taken down. This second Event contains more information about the procedure you will need to follow to get the freebie.
You will notice that the steps are straight forward. You need to join the scam and then invite some friends which will determine the value of the voucher. Not everybody has 500 Facebook friends, but it is easy to see why this scam has spread this quickly, as users that don’t realize that this is a scam will most likely invite all their friends.
As a final step you are instructed to access a website to claim the voucher. Unfortunately, the website is unavailable at this moment, but it is not that hard to guess what you should find there. Best case scenario it is just a scam survey, like with most Facebook scams. Worst case, an infected file just like in the Coca Coal scam for yesterday.
Both Events contained links to their ‘creator’. In this case it is a Facebook Page and this allowed me to see a list of scammy Events of that Page, which you can see below.
There are 13 identical Events with almost 300k users attending, maybe attending, or just invited. I can not say that those are unique users for each Event, but it is still an impressive average of 23k users per event. And this is just the first Event of the scam. The second Event is created by a different Facebook Page, which also has 13 Events to its name with an average of 7k users per event. As time passes and Facebook does not step up, the number of users will definitely increase.
It seems that scammers believe they have hit a soft spot in Facebook’ security measures with this kind of scams, otherwise why rolling out two similar scams in two days? Although scams based on Facebook Events are not a new thing, there is usually some time between them. Yesterday I wrote a blog post about a ‘Coca Cola Giveaway ( 24 Pack Limited Offer )’ scam (you can read it here). Today it is time for McDonalds to be the illegal used brand by scammers. I do not know which will be the next brand, but you should be very suspicious if invited to an Event that promises anything free.
For users that have accessed this scam you can read my new blog entry on How to deal with a scammy Facebook Event
Stay socially safe and do not forget to visit our Facebook page available here or our Twitter account here (@scamwiki).
Related articles
- $1000 JCPenney Gift Card – Facebook Scam (scamwiki.wordpress.com)
Coca Cola Giveaway ( 24 Pack Limited Offer ) – Facebook Scam
Scam text:
Coca Cola Giveaway ( 24 Pack Limited Offer )
Celebrating a whopping $50 billion revenue in 2011, Coca-Cola has decided to give away free 24 packs for our loyal customers.
Scam post:
First sighting:
February 2012
Phishing & Survey scam
Scam process:
The scam is works using Facebook events. At this moment there are 2 Facebook Events set up to gain a decent number of users.
This is the first event that was created:
As you can see, this Event doesn’t contain any actual information about the giveaway and directs users to another Facebook Event. The smart thing that scammers did is that they did not place the other event’s link on the page. Instead they use a link to a website that they control. As that website has just a re-direct job, it can easily be modified so that the re-direct target is a new one. This way, as long as Facebook does not delete this main Event, it make not importance how many secondary Events or Pages are shut down.
This is the second Facebook Event (where the re-direct I mentioned earlier takes the user):
Now comes the interesting part, because what you see above is the improved 2.0 version of the scam. When I first saw the scam, the second event contained 2 steps. The first asked the user to invite Facebook friends to the event in order to determine the number of products he/she would gain. The second one instructed the user to visit a certain website where the fake voucher was said to be found. In their report of the scam, Facecrooks took screen shots of this version as you can see here.
In the mean time, the scam was upgraded from a survey scam to a phishing which finishes with a scam survey. Allow me to explain. Clicking on the link from the second Event prompts the download of a certain ‘cocacolagiveaway.exe‘ file. I downloaded the file and scanned it multiple antivirus software using Virustotal.com. Only one software identified it as malware so I decided to run it. Not to my surprise, the following menu appeared.
The software clearly asks the user for his/her Facebook login information which makes it a phishing threat and under no circumstances users should reveal their Facebook email and password. Whether the user fills in the boxes and clicks ‘Log in’ or doesn’t do anything and clicks ‘Cancel’ the next part is identical. The software closes and while sending the gathered info to the scammers it also opens a new website. As you might guess, the website contains the survey scam which is the second malicious part of the scam.
Checking again right now on the initial fake Event, I can see that it directs to a newly set-up Event which has the steps that Facecrooks reported. There are more than 5k people invited to this scam and the number rises quickly. Also, I am sure that other new Events are just being created to take part in this attack.
This a fast changing scam and until Facebook erases the initial Event, it will definitely attract more users than the current 25k it has. Users that are invited by their friends to this Event should report it, as that is the only action users have against this type of threats.
For users that have accessed this scam you can read my new blog entry on How to deal with a scammy Facebook Event
Stay socially safe and do not forget to visit our Facebook page available here or our Twitter account here (@scamwiki).
Related articles
- $1000 JCPenney Gift Card – Facebook Scam (scamwiki.wordpress.com)
- Coca-Cola Gets Their Tumblr On (socialfresh.com)
Yet another scam using Whitney Houston’s name surfaces on Facebook
The tragic death of Whitney Houston was probably one of the most important news this year and it has generated a lot of buzz on and off social networks. As usual, scammers couldn’t miss this opportunity and scrambled to create and distribute Facebook threats that use this hot topic. The BULLDOG Estate warned users here about a scam involving the singer’s name and then Facecrooks discovered and analyzed here a more serious scam which advertised a ‘shocking secret revealed by Whitney Houston’s autopsy’. Now, a week after the unfortunate event, a new scam is trying to cash in on this artist’s brand.
And as death videos, autopsy or causes have been used already, it is time for her music to come into play and asks ‘Which Whitney Houston Song Are You? Find Out Here –> *Link*’. The post also uses a photo of the late artist which should attract the user’s attention.
As you can see, the post comes with actual songs to make it seem more real. The link from the posts takes the user outside of Facebook to a .info domain where the scam app is hosted. That is irrelevant to the user and he/she will then be greeted by the Facebook app permission request screen.
Nothing suspicious this far. These permissions are asked by all apps either legit or fake. It is necessary to click on ‘Allow’ in order to continue, so the user will have to do just that if he/she wants to find his/her Whitney Huston song. But the app is not a normal one, as it does not have any options, menu or rules. Clicking ‘Allow’ will load a Facebook Page instead. A Page which appears to be just another Page dedicated to the deceased star.
This is the point where the user might smell something rotten. The Page has a Welcome tab which sure enough contains a verification survey, which is in fact a preliminary step of a survey scam. Moving past this point will take the user to a fake contest set up for the county he/she resides in. Meanwhile, on the Facebook Wall the scam post has been placed to keep the threat moving.
I don not believe this is the last scam that we will see having Whitney Houston as a subject and, as more news about her are published, scammers will try take advantage of all opportunities to cash in.
Stay socially safe and do not forget to visit our Facebook page available here or our Twitter account here (@scamwiki).
Related articles
- $1000 JCPenney Gift Card – Facebook Scam (scamwiki.wordpress.com)
- Facebook scam: — Whitney Houstons autopsy reveals a shocking secret that explains her death. (zdnet.com)
- A Lot of People Thought Oprah Was Whitney Houston on Facebook [Rip] (gizmodo.com)
$1000 JCPenney Gift Card – Facebook Scam
Scam text:
I LOVE JC PENNYS
First sighting:
One the clicks are performed on this Facebook Page, the road takes the user to a website which is the beginning of the scam survey.
There are a couple of warm-up questions which end with yet another request that the user must complete in order to obtain the free $1,000 JC Penny gift card. This is the part where the user has to spread the scam to other Facebook users.
Hitting ‘Ok’ will open the Facebook Share pop-up which contains the initial post from this blog entry. Moving forward with the survey, the user is asked to hand over personal info, under the pretext that they are necessary for the delivery of the reward. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Well, this is just a clever method to get an email address and cell phone number to send additional advertisements to.
Right when the user might think that he/she will finally receive the desired free gift card reality hits! The website clearly states that before qualifying for the ‘free’ $1,000 JC Penny Gift Card the user must complete at least 2 reward offers from the website.
Qualify for the gift card! And not certainly – without any doubt – for sure receive it. This is why I call these type of promotions survey scams. Because it all starts with a free item and then it is not so free.
- One Free Amazon.com Gift Card (Limited Time Only) – Facebook Scam Spreading : How To Avoid It [ALERT] (thetechnologycafe.com)
- ‘HOLY W0W HAVE YOU VIEWED THIS?’ is a two in one Facebook scam (scamwiki.wordpress.com)
- Helpful Tips: Beware of that Facebook Post (onceuponafriendship.com)
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