‘We are humans’
Since we are humans, we may be tempted to click on a ‘fun’ video in Facebook that is liked by one of our friends. The moment you click on the ‘play’ button, you will be redirected to a website and then some scripts get executed.
The result? All your friends and the world will see that you liked the video. This leads to more clicks. In addition to this ‘auto liking,’ I strongly believe that these scripts may lift your personal data. So what can we do?
Likejacking
Although I used the term ‘auto liking,’ it appears that the correct technical term is ‘likejacking.’ Wikipedia says that:
Likejacking, a form of clickjacking, is a malicious technique of tricking users of a website into posting a Facebook status update for a site they did not intentionally mean to “like”.
My suggestions:
1. If you are already a victim, immediately change the Facebook password to something complex and difficult to guess.
2. See the above screenshot (Click on the image for a larger view). Spartacus trailer is a genuine Youtube video. Hot Girls Fight is a spam. It is shown there that the redirected link is ‘apps.facebook.com.’ So, do not click.
You can also verify this by hovering the cursor on the video. Your browser will show the link at the bottom status bar.
3. If you observe closely, you will see that the blue Play button of the spam video is a low resolution image. Observe that the Play button in the Spartacus link has clear edges and looks alive.
4. I have heard that you can disable auto execution of scripts in your browser. I don’t know how it will affect the browsing experience.
Other Spam Videos
Read more about this spam video and how it works in this link: AllFacebook.com: ‘ALERT: Avoid ‘Father Catches Daughter On Webcam.’
This spam has a fake CAPTCHA to ‘view ‘ the video! This will show up as a genuine response from the friend. In the example shown above, my friend was duped to enter “ha haha.” Other variation is “lol sick.” Read the detailed working of this spam video at: ‘FaceCrooks.com: [SCAM ALERT] this woman has a orgasm on a roller coaster! LOL.’
I have no information on this ‘clothes’ video yet. Just stay away!
See more details of this spam here on Takniq.com.
Read how this spam works at Softpedia.com.
Hope this helps.
I know you will click on “Father catches daughter on webcam”.. i tried only 5 times 😛
A new one has surfaced which does something like this.
ha ha! Its fun to keep track of all those who couldn’t resist the temptation like you 😉 I was astonished to see that most of the clicks were generated from girls. Even though a spam, it exploited the curiosity of everyone.