Beware of New Facebook Spam, "Can happen to Anyone" !

From past few days, many of my friends were posting a link on my wall in Facebook. And the comment on the video was like "hey, hahaha can happen to anyone! Carelessness of Celebrities on TV". It looked like a link to a celebrity's 'nip slip' video. One could easily guess it is a spam. But most of the users are curious about such videos and follow the link. what happens next ? Let me explain !

When you follow the link, you will be reach the blog http://14fbvideos.blogspot.com. In fact, hackers are using many blogs and free blogging services to trap the users. So you may reach other blogs like http://fbhotcelebs.blogspot.com, http://celebvideos.blogspot.com etc. But what you see on those blog look exactly like a Facebook webpage !! Most of the users don't notice their address bar and think that they are still on Facebook.


Once the page loads completely, you will see something like this:





You will be asked to install an extension called 'Youtube Premium'. If you install that extension (on Google Chrome) or Addon (on Mozilla Firefox), you are inviting serious problems ! After installing, you are asked to refresh the page. This extension is suspected to collect your Facebook account username and password. Once they get access to your account, first thing they do is to send similar link to all your Friends !!


What else could be a tragedy than this ? IYour friends start to think in a different way about you and more than that, you are indirectly helping hackers to hack your friend's account too !! So, please stay away with such links and always check your address bar before entering your credentials. If you have got any such links from your friends, most likely their account is compromised. Tell them to remove that extension, in case they have installed, and change password. Share this post with your friends so that they too stay safe.


Be Cautious, be safe, 'cause this "Can happen to Anyone" !

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Use tinyURL's Preview Feature to secure your Twitter Account !

Link shortners are now used extensively on web. They are good for websites with character limit, like Twitter. They are even useful outside twitter. But spammers and hackers are using this useful tool to trap novice users on social networking sites.

As I have seen, TinyURL is the most used link shortner by spammers and hackers. There is a strong reason for this! Have you ever noticed that, link shortend using TinyURL don't expand to original site on hovering your mouse cursor on it, but most of the other services do ?!

Yes, TinyURLs won't expand to original site on hovering mouse cursor, which helps hackers to hide the evil URLs from users ! Without knowledge, if you click on those links, you are inviting danger! After getting infamous for this cause, TinyURL has now taken steps to avoid this.

Now you can preview URL (or let us call it Web Address) of original site before going to that site. All you have to do is, go to tinyurl.com, click on 'preview feature' [found on left sidebar of the homepage] and click on 'click here to enable previews'. That's it, now, everytime when you click on a TinyURL link, you will be taken to TinyURL website and original link will be revealed. First of all, your browser cookies must be enabled.

Even though this doesn't secure your twitter account completely, it allows you to decide whether to go to the original website or not, thus reducing possible traps :)

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Beware of phishing on Twitter and Facebook !

I just got a direct message (DM) on twitter today and it was like, "Tell me if this blog is about you? http://tinyurl.com/6ccbp7w". The messages may be different, like, "This gotta be you in this picture?", but link remains same. At the first look itself, I found out it to be a spam. I had even seen such links on facebook. So I didn't click on that link.

But when I looked at my timeline, I saw many people complaining about such DMs and this caught my interest. So I decided to take risk and click on that link. At first, I hovered the mouse cursor on that link, but that didn't expand to the original site. That confirmed it to be a spam [I just wonder why most of them use tinyurl, a URL shortner service]. But I had to take risk. So, I cleared all my browser cookies first to secure other services I use. Then I copied the link and pasted onto new tab and was ready to go.

Now I clicked on that link and it took me to a webpage looking similar to twitter login page [if you use Google Chrome, you will be warned before entering that page! Read my other post about why Google Chrome is the best web browser! ]. Everything what you see on twitter login page was present there, but for my wonder, the address of that webpage was http://itiwitter.com/twitterlogin/ !! Many novice and average internet users really think that it is twitter and just enter their username and password and click on sign in. If you do that, your twitter account would then be compromised !

When you click on sign in button, the data you entered will be then sent to a PHP script, hosted on some unknown server, for processing. That means, your username and password will be saved by that script and you will be redirected to original twitter as usual! You never come to know about the password theft! You may get this kind of messages from your friends. And if you get one, sadly, your friend's account has been compromised. Many of my fellow followers are already victims of this trick. After gaining access to your account, hackers may use your account to trick your followers with similar links, or they would completely lock your account from you!

Most of the evil hackers use social networking sites to trap users to give out their credentials. Reason is not a surprise, social networking sites are widespread and even a novice user can use them without any difficulty. So please avoid clicking on any such links and be safe on web :)


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You are under attack - Be safe on Twitter !

Recently, twitter has become a favorite places for evil hackers. Someone follows you and you simply follow back just because they follow you. Then you get a direct message like, "hey check out who is stalking you on Twitter, visit http://t.co/q4wjuZB install app, works great". If you simply click without a second thought, your account is now compromised !

Yes, there are many such tricks, which bots [yes, they are not actually people, but automated programs] use to exploit your twitter accounts. Link shortners are their weapons. Sometimes, someone unknown tweet you with a link. But that link actually allow the bot to access cookies stored in your browser ! That is really dangerous because, not only your twiiter account, but all the websites you might have visited like, facebook, tumblr,yahoomail, gmail, ect would be hacked !

Some of the most used tweets to trick you are listed below. [Few are harmless, but useless and just spam].

> Wow, getting TONS of followers from this program. Can't believe it, check it out http://bity.me/7Ni

> Become your own boss, work from home, part-time -- http://ez.cm/XWkUub

> I made $800 yesterday from pc, check out how http://crod.cz/2h quiting my job now lol

> hey check out who is stalking you on Twitter, visit http://krul.rs/cb install app, works great [Dangerous !!]

> i got cheap medication online without a prescription...http://tinyurl.com/5slk8kr

> http://bit.ly/nC0mcy [extremely dangerous !! This links to http://redirect.php/?cookies=true , that is to cookies in your browser ! It simply then redirects to a website named http://chroniccomissions.com/indext1.php and you never come to know about stolen cookies of your browser !!]

> OMFG! I just received a F R E E iPhone 4 from JUST submitting my email! Go to this site for yours: http://bity.me/3BO [ These kind of links normally take you to porn related websites !]

> I just received a F R E E MacBookPro from this site! Get yours here: http://twtr.me/17g :P



Avoid clicking on such links, if you encounter any. If someone tweet you and have no followers and followings, they are bots and block such accounts. Click only on the links tweeted by someone you trust and before clicking, hover your mouse cursor on the link to see where it redirects. If it just show the same link, click at your own risk !

If you get such Direct Messages or tweets, even from your friends, think your friend's account has been compromised ! So inform them about this before fighting with them. If your account is compromised but still have access to your account, change your password. If you have lost the access, create a new profile and report the old account as spam.[This has to be done at the expense of losing your followers !]

Prevention is better than cure. So be careful before clicking on such links. Be safe, be happy :)


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See who viewed your profile on facebook !! Well, that is just a SPAM !

Now a days you see lot of posts on your wall and your friends' wall stating something like "OMG OMG Now you can see who viewed your profile, click here !!". Everyone is curious to know who follows us. So most people click on that link. Now the game begins ! Once you click on that link and permit that application to access your account, a similar kind of post is sent to your entire friends list !! wow, thats freakin' !!

I had a same experience once. There are other similar kind of spam which ask you to post that message on 5 different places on facebook and then to complete surveys. But your never get to see who viewed your profile !

Truth is, there exists no such application or script on facebook. All application that promise to show you your profile viewers are spam and are even dangerous sometimes. Please stay away from that kind of applications and don't click on such links. Recently, It tend to log out when I go to my profile page even though I hadn't clicked on any such links ! After going through facebook's help page, I found out that virus was spread through friends who clicked on such links and only way to prevent was to block them !!

So please spread this message to your friends and be safe online. Happy surfing :)

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