Spammers have invited over 10 million Facebook users to fake events in yet another attempt to generate income from online survey scams according to a report by the IT security and data protection firm Sophos. Even as we file this report, the scam is in progress and several thousand unwitting Facebook users are falling prey to it.
One of the event known as "Who blocked you from his friend list?" has already tricked over 165,000 people into signing-up, with an astounding 10.3 million users still deciding whether or not to respond. Scammers embed instructions into the 'More info' section of the event's summary and this convinces Facebook users to unwittingly visit the webpages for online surveys or competitions, which are a source of revenue for the scammers by means of commission. Sometimes, users are asked to provide a mobile phone number, and if the user is naive enough to provide it, he/she will most probably end up getting signed up for an expensive premium rate service.
Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, Graham Cluley said, "These spammed-out event invitations and links to survey scams are one of the biggest nuisances on Facebook right now, impacting millions of users every day. It would be great if Facebook was being more proactive in shutting down these obviously bogus events, as currently it's far too easy for the scammers to fill their pockets through schemes like this."
In case you are affected by this scam, then you must cancel your reservation for the event. You must also notify your friends that you have shared a bogus link with them and/or invited them to a fake event. In case you have submitted your mobile phone number, you must contact your mobile service provider and inform them to keep any bogus charges from appearing in your mobile account.
The moral of the story is that Facebook users must beware of such suspicious events and think twice before accepting invitations from an unknown source.
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