Rogue Facebook app goes viral
July 7th, 2010 - 7:47 pm ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt
New York, July 7 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world, but its use is becoming dangerous now. More than 170000 Facebook users clicked on a dangerous link, that is spreading rapidly like a virus on the website.
The link reveals a person on video who died from sending an unknown message from his phone. The link is automatically pasted on user’s walls as “I am shocked!!! I’m NEVER texting AGAIN since I found this out. Video here: http://bit.ly/a37TaB - Worldwide scandal!”
Users who click link shown above are sent to the homepage of an application, which requests your permission to post on your wall. Once your permission is given, the link starts spreading to other Facebook users like a typical virus.
“Sure enough - with the permission granted, the application begins to spread its links virally via your Facebook profile,” according to senior Sophos researcher Graham Cluley.
Facebook has warned users about giving permission to these applications but most users ignore the warning. You can remove these links from your account by heading to your “application settings menu” and deleting “I will never text again” application or removing the links from your wall posts that have been affected.
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Tags: application settings, facebook, graham cluley, researcher, scandal, settings menu, social networking site, virus