Viral Facebook Hacking

Imagine for a moment that you see a link on a friend’s Facebook page and it is posted by a fellow friend stating “hahah mine is hilarious!!! Check yours out”

The link is titles, “See what you’ll look like in the future.” It shows a picture of an elderly man next to the link and looks harmless at first. I noticed it all over several of my friend’s walls and thought little of it and clicked the link. It took me to a Facebook page that said to prove that I was a human and not an automated user that I had to press a series of keys in combinations. It made me repeat it over and over as if the keys were not registering at first.

What I didn’t know is that while I was following the instructions on my page the program was instant messaging my online friends and posting on every last one of my friends walls the identical link and post but under my name. Right away I realized I had been hacked. I raced into my profile to change my password and at first it would not allow me to. Eventually I got my account to accept the password change. This stopped the hack but damage was already done.

The links were posted on hundreds of walls under my name and through instant messengers. I had to warn everyone online first so that they did not repeat the mistake and get angry with me. Then I had to manually go through and delete every last post made by my “hacked” account before someone reported it. Why not report this problem to Facebook? Well the problem therein is that the individual posting it or “hacked” individual gets the blame and not the original creator. This will block or deactivate your account if enough people report it.

To avoid getting your friends kicked off of Facebook you should simply delete the post and email Facebook direct to inform them of the problem so that they can track it back to the origins if at all possible. The link offers to show you what you will look like in twenty years as well as offers you a custom backdrop for your Facebook page. It starts to download with a warning right away and I stopped it. This download could very easily have infected my entire computer and not just my Facebook account if I did not act in a timely manner.

Be warned of this Facebook problem. Many of these virus links and messages exist on networks. The best way to protect yourself is to know of their existence and what to watch for.

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Article by Kevin C Davison
“I write to entertain, and for a cause.”