Back in February I sent an email alert out to all the members of my Facebook fan pages about a scam that was proliferating across Facebook. The scam was a sneaky one. It was a message that came through in your notifications (not in your email) that stated, “Attention, your Facebook account could be deactivated. Click here to save it.”
Well, when you clicked on that notification you were actually taken to a third party application called ‘Account Verification’ that carried the Facebook logo and asked for access to your account & all associated information that it required ‘to work’. It looked pretty official, but I assure you that it was not. It was a well thought out plan to gain access to as many accounts as possible in the shortest amount of time possible. Because, as soon as you clicked ‘allow access’ the application then had access to your account and sent ‘notifications’ to every single one of your friends letting them know that their accounts ‘might be deactivated’.
And the cycle went on and on. Whatever became of that particular application, I don’t know. But I can say with a pretty high degree of certainty that it will not be the last malicious application to plague Facebook users.
So, what I have done is put together a quick video to show you how to verify that an application is legitimately made by Facebook. This 2 minute video shows you how to quickly check an application before you click ‘Allow Access’ and could save you a lot of headaches in the future.
Please keep in mind that there are many legitimate applications that are not developed by Facebook. This video is only referring to malicious applications that claim to be developed by Facebook and ask you to verify your account, email, account information etc etc.
Be safe out there!!
-Cheryl
Cheryl Waller
Marketing Consultant SEO, SEM, SMM
www.CherylWaller.com
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