Don’t Become A Victim Of Facebook Application Scams!

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Online social network sites revolutionize the web these days, one of those being Facebook. Everyday hundreds of people join Facebook to dig out their old friends and also to make new friends. Facebook is cooler than other social networking sites that they offer photo-sharing, quizzes, games, chatting and many more. Apart from these Facebook allows application developers to build small programs called applications that use Facebook as the platform.

Applications add fun to the site, of course. Developers create applications for many reasons, some of which are

1. to enhance user experience in the site
2. to enhave their marketing, that is for some developers creating an application can be a part of their marketing strategy
3. some want to become popular or capture an iconic status on the web through their applications
4. to gather information through the application and use them in an unharmful manner for their marketing purpose
5. some are really mischievous and use applications to create malicious software and/or run scams using Facebook.

A scam is a scam, no matter how small it can be, and once we are a victim of it, it is really hard to say how much we will have to pay to go through out of it!

Knowing a bit about what these applications are and how they work, we could stay safe on Facebook and still have fun. All applications, games, quizzes and tools, need few lines of code to be installed in your Facebook profile. Although as a user, you do not install the code manually, you allow someone to do it at the click of a button! Of course, you agree to accept the user agreement (in most case without even looking it!) and then install the application. As I have mentioned earlier, not all applications are genuine and you should be careful when you click “Allow” to access your Facebook profile. In particular, you should do a bit of research (quite easy, I promise) to know what information from your profile will that application need to function. Malicious applications will access far more than what is required from your profile. So are there any signs that you could catch before your information is stealed? I point out a few below, but this is not all!

1. If the application requires your password or credit card information, you should simply not use that application. Often, passwords and credit card information are used by the scammers to take advantage of their victims.

2. If the application takes you to a new page, you should carefully check the domain name of the page. The new page will look like the real Facebook page, the scammers are smart enough.

3. Pop up windows asking you to download or install an application is also an alarming sign. Never click OK to this. Some malicious softwares don’t care if you click OK or not, they run even if you click cancel. It is therefore always better to click close by using the cross mark at the right top corner of the window.

4. Messages from your friends can also be scams. I am not telling that your friend is the black sheep but his/her account may be hacked by such applications that send automatic messages to all friends in the list. You normally will be asked to click a link. If the message looks odd and is not in the style of your friend then you need to be careful.

Do you know that there is a technical name for this kind of scammers manipulating victims? Yes it is called Social Engineering. The hackers, called crackers can also put the people in a situation so that they would willingly want to share their information. For example,

1. By promising get-rich-quick schemes.
2. By tempting the person to share credit card information and then using it fradulently.
3. By encouraging or creating an appealing profile for a user in a particular webpage, while clicking the link to the webpage, the user will actually be downloading a malicious software.

What if you think that you are being attacked?

If you know that your password has been stolen, notify this to all of your friends so that no more victims arise from through your compromised account. In general do not use the same password for all the services you use, if one of your website is hacked all the others are hacked too! Change your password often and always use a mix of characters, never use names or dates.

There are lots of genuine applications in Facebook that are fun and useful, but little caution is needed to enjoy your stay at Facebook. Just think twice before installing an application, allowing an application to access your Facebook profile and/or clicking on any link!

Tagged as: Facebook, Facebook Applications, hot to stay safe online, Malicious Software, Online Safety, Scams

Article by JaneSheeba

+Jane is the founder of Problogging Success. She is an expert blogger, consultant, freelance writer and blog designer. Don't forget to get your hands on two FREE Ebooks she offers.

Jane has written 243 awesome posts for Problogging Success.