Facebook scams have been around since Facebook became viral. We have seen crooks trying and often succeeding in making people click on corrupted videos, images, and links. The latest Facebook scam, however, involves the much anticipated ‘dislike’ button. As you probably know, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared the network’s plan to include the new button in a Q&A. Even though the name of the button was not revealed then, cyber crooks have already figured out a way to make a scam out of it.
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What is Facebook Dislike Button Scam About? How Does It Work?
Shortly said, the scam prompts users to click on a link saying something like:
→‘Get newly introduced Facebook dislike button on your profile.’
The scam is displayed in the users’ newsfeeds and pretends to be invite-only. If the user is tricked into clicking, he will land on a fake page that is masqueraded as a Facebook website. The scamming website has instructions on how to share the page with other users by sending it to five groups. The implied method is nothing we haven’t seen before. Crooks typically seek the chance to multiply their scams the quickest way possible – through sharing it with Facebook groups.
Related: Facebook Virus Posting from My Profile
It is easy to assume that clicking on the links causes redirects to two pages that have nothing to do with Facebook or its ‘dislike’ button. Both of the destinations attempt to obtain information from users by making them sign up. If you land on such a page, you should navigate away from it as soon as possible. Then, scanning your system is usually required, because scamming websites can affect your system in multiple ways.
How Can I Stay Protected against Scamming Websites?
Scamming websites are all over the Internet. They seek to exploit uneducated users who are gullible and easily fall into frauds. By taking part in an online scam, you can be affected in various ways. This is a list of possible outcomes that may happen, if you have clicked on corrupted links/videos/some other media content:
- Your personal information can be harvested. Scamming websites typically urge users to share their banking credentials, email addresses, or other form of personally-identifiable information.
- Your browser’s settings can be altered and tracking technologies may be added to it. Once this is done, you may start witnessing intrusive ad-sponsored content in the form of pop-up and pop-down windows, in-text ads, banners, underlined hyperlinks, etc. In addition, random page texts can be turned into hyperlinks. If you interact with any of the displayed content, things can get much uglier.
- Your Windows Registry can be affected, as well as other system settings. Some scamming pages are employed to carry through drive-by downloads. Such downloads may be silent, which means that you won’t be notified of them. As a result, your system can be flooded with potentially unwanted software and even malware. Unwanted software can target the browser and act as a browser hijacker by changing the user’s home page, search page, error page, or new tab page without his consent. New entries can be added to the Registry, and others can be deleted. As a result, you may start having problems with your Internet Connection.
For instance, browser hijackers, such as Dnsioweb.net can act as a LSP browser hijacker. As a result, the traffic between the Internet and your applications can be intercepted, filtered and modified. For more information about LSP hijacking, check this topic on the MalwareBytes forum.
In Conclusion: Think About Your Online Safety
If you have encountered a scamming website, be it yet another Facebook Scam or a page promoting rogue software, you should consider running a powerful AV scanner. You can also enable your Windows Firewall, add an external one to increase your security level, and take care of your favorite browser by adding a plug-in to guard it from intruders (such as the browser extension designed by VirusTotal).
To check your system for unwanted software manually, don’t forget to check your system.
Spy Hunter scanner will only detect the threat. If you want the threat to be automatically removed, you need to purchase the full version of the anti-malware tool.Find Out More About SpyHunter Anti-Malware Tool / How to Uninstall SpyHunter
Milena Dimitrova
An inspired writer and content manager who has been with SensorsTechForum since the beginning. Focused on user privacy and malware development, she strongly believes in a world where cybersecurity plays a central role. If common sense makes no sense, she will be there to take notes. Those notes may later turn into articles! Follow Milena @Milenyim
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