The Ways a Facebook Virus can Spread
Ever wondered about who thought of the term “con artist” to describe someone who is obviously just a thief? Well, they also call them social engineers.
It’s for reason of course – it’s quite an art how they use their understanding of human nature to manipulate people and get them to do exactly as they wish.
This kind of social engineering in pursuit of fraud is particularly useful in the era of social networking. It helps hackers really get a Facebook virus in and about.
A very popular thing for makers of Facebook virus and malware examples to do to spread their evil, often, is to hack into a person’s account, gain control of it, and then to chat over Facebook to his closest friends with some dishonest plan in mind.
They think of some kind of sob story about how they are far from home, have been robbed and need some money. The person who receives this message will believe that since it comes from his friend’s Facebook account, it has to be genuine.
Here’s the perfect example for why they call this “social engineering”. Facebook has thousands and thousands of Facebook applications. They are made for all kinds of interests. People download them to add to the fun of it all.
Facebook doesn’t scrutinize or approve most of those apps that are on offer. Facebook’s app list is more like the Google Apps Marketplace than like the iTunes App Store in this way.
So when you download and install a Facebook app, you have no idea what it is – it could be a Facebook virus, for all you know. In many cases, it actually is.
And even if you don’t download an actual Facebook virus posing as an app, you could be downloading something programmed by some school kid who won’t be careful with the access he has to your personal information. You can get robbed that way.
What do you do when you find an app that says something irresistible like, “Find out about which of your friends is about to break up in the next 20 min”? Can you really resist? That’s social engineering for you.
There are many more tricks they have up their sleeve. For instance, how about a message you might get that says, “Here’s a great new video about you”.
Who could resist this? Even if you receive this from a friend, there is no way you could know if your friend really sent this – or if a hacker gained access to your friend’s account. Almost always, this is a virus.
Incoming search terms:
