Sophos warns Facebook users about the reappearance of survey scams that are quickly spreading across the social network. Many Facebook users are struggling to clean up their accounts once they have been tricked into allowing a third-party application to post messages from their profile.
These scams are able to spread across the network as users think that online friends have posted the message, seemingly linking it to the enticing material. However, by clicking on the link and giving a third-party Facebook application access to their profile, users are helping the scammers to spread the application across their network of friends.
"We have received an extremely large number of messages this weekend from worried Facebook users who are trying to remove these applications from their profiles once they have been affected by the scams," said Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos. "The safest way to protect yourself from such scams, is to not click on unknown links in the first place, even if you think they have been posted by a friend. If you have fallen for these tricks though, it is important to remove the applications completely, not just the wall posts, to ensure that you are not helping the bad guys to spread the scam further."
