We’ve all had a friend on Facebook magically post something about a free iPad or clothing and wondered “how is this possible?” Well going back to something my mother taught me long ago “if its too good to be true, it probably is”. Â This is exactly what all of these Facebook posts are. Â Too good to be true. Â Here are some helpful tips to avoid being sucked into a scam and avoid being ridiculed by your social networks.
- There is no way a company would give out thousands of iPads for free.  The cost alone of purchasing that many iPads makes this deal impossible to be true. (There are legitimate contests that do give away small numbers of iPads).  The goal of this scam is to mislead you and your Facebook friends into filling out surveys.
- Anything asking you to give access to your account should be read through very carefully. Â The amount of information on your Facebook page is enough to do many nasty things so read carefully.
- “Jaa” is Finnish for like and Facebook would never use this in combination with English or any other language.
- Video’s of celebrities doing
dirtyillicit activities or current events (as seen in the photo above) with titles such as “Shocking” or “You won’t believe this”.  The trick they use here is after you click on the video they later ask you to update some sort of software on your computer.  However this update isn’t actually an update but malware or hijacking of your Facebook account. - The newest and most clever type of attack is shown below:
Outlined above is a conversation between a real person (guy in white) and a hijacked account sending a link through. Â This link leads to a fake Youtube page again asking for you to update Flash Player. Â As seen on kevinfrancis.net the most convincing part are the fake comments below the fake video.
As Facebook scammers are becoming more cunning so should you. Â Keep up to date by following us on Twitter @faronics or like us on Facebook.