Scams on Facebook: Heinous Scams and Vicious Tricks on Dimwitted Users

It seems almost every day that the social networking site, Facebook, is in the news for one reason or another. This website may be in for some trouble now with the release of the 2012 Internet Threats Trend Report.

Someone please get Facebook a handkerchief, it looks like there may be waterworks on the horizon! Facebook is facing several reported incidents of numerous varieties right now. Perhaps the worst of which are the charges of malicious activity involving affiliate marketing scams.

Commtouch has released the 2012 Internet Threats Trend Report which has issued an entire section which accuses Facebook of allowing ads and websites to utilize affiliate marketing scams and other forms of advertisement that has brought out terrible outcomes for those who fall victim to the links emails and ads. The report itself covers all varieties of malware, phishing and spam techniques from the previous year and the abusers of these practices.

According to their website, the report from Commtouch will be investigating, “the three stages of Facebook attacks: social engineering tricks, how attacks spread between friends, and how cyber criminals benefit from the attacks.”  Commtouch also reported that in November and December alone, over one-hundred billion spam emails with malicious content were sent.

According to a report from InfoHQ, three-fourths of the all Facebook ads are affiliate marketing sites. These ads are activated by Facebook users who find interest and click on whatever the advertisement may be and immediately are hit, “with malware and malicious scripts.”

The report also claims that forty-eight percent of these cases were made by unknowing victims who simply clicked on a “like” or “share” button on Facebook and were then savagely attacked by these cyber parasites. The report makes it clear that the majority of these affiliate marketing ads are offering either free goods, displaying incredible headlines or important new advancements on the social network site.

What is important to recognize is that while Facebook “allows” these advertisements and affiliate marketing sites to be displayed on the social network site, they are not forcing their users to visit these ads. The user is responsible for their actions, are they not? How can users blame the social network site for their own “clicking decisions?”

If there is an advertisement on Facebook, a user has the choice to ignore the ad and go back to playing Family Feud or Farmland. With all of the new changes Facebook undergoes on a regular basis, it is hard to even find ads these days, let alone one’s own profile page. At the end of the day, Facebook should be aware of what they allow on their site, but the individual users need to get some common sense and stop blaming a website for their computer problems.

Author Byll Monahan, 24, is a graduate from Cabrini College in Radnor, PA. He has had his fair share of problems with Facebook in the past but has learned not to click on everything he sees on the internet, and hopes his readers will learn to do the same!