Facebook like-jacking scams are popping up in a wider variety of languages, according to research by Kaspersky Lab.
Kaspersky Lab Expert Christian Funk writes on the Securelist blog that Like-jacking scams will expand from an English-only phenomenon, becoming a nuisance to speakers of all the world’s vast and varied languages, or at least the popular ones.
A like-jacking scam is one in which a third party application uses engaging content to entice facebook users into following a link that actually redirects to a survey.
Funk cites a recent Like-jacking incident in which German language Facebook users were tempted with a message offering graphic video of a roller coaster accident. As is typical of these scams, gullible users were asked to grant access to a Facebook application and prompted to fill out a poll before viewing the video.
The survey, according to the report on Securelist, is about love and relationships, and it promises to send personalized results to users via text message. The reality is that anyone fooled into this will end up paying an exorbitant fee for these messages until they realize and unsubscribe.
Funk’s prediction arises from a solid premise. According to official Facebook statistics, of the some 500 million people on the social media behemoth, only thirty percent live in the U.S., which means that roughly 350 million people on Facebook live outside the U.S. According to Funk, cyber criminals have concluded that they are missing out on a large slice of the Facebook pie by not localizing their click-jacking scams.
Facebook has taken steps to beef up its security team in recent years, as the network’s user population has exploded to more than 500 million members. At the Virus Bulletin Conference in September, Facebook’s first full time virus researcher, Nick Bilogorskiy, said that the network was working hard to stay on top of new threats, including viruses and scams that spread between users who are accustomed to sharing links, photos and other content.
