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Colon Cleansing Spam Running Through Facebook

by Warren Riddle on October 2, 2009 at 06:38 AM

Grifters love Facebook, and there seems to be no limit to the ingenuity and creativity of the shadowy con-artists. According to the Counter Measures blog, a new scam has emerged, which may be connected to previous schemes, incorporating hacked accounts, new phishing techniques, and status updates that falsely appear to be posted via SMS.

The scam began with phony spam status updates, actually posted through the Facebook mobile portal (m.facebook.com), that touted the colon cleansing benefits of ColonRevi.com (which has been disabled). The link actually redirects people to another supplement-shilling site where the new phishing lure would appear. Leaving the page causes what appears to be a real-time support chat window to launch, offering discounts for the products. Instead, the chat window was actually a scripted part of the scam intended to snare more victims.

If it looks like your account might have been compromised, Facebook obviously recommends changing the password, as well as monitoring the Facebook Security blog. There are numerous protective measures and precautions one can follow to avoid such scams, but there's one easy, sure-fire way to not be tempted by spam messages hawking colon cleansers, weight loss pills, and sexual enhancers: Get outside and exercise. [From: Counter Measures]

Tags: facebook, facebook phishing, FacebookPhishing, phishing, scams, top

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