14 DAY TRIAL // There have been a lot of scams on Facebook that promise users they can change their profile’s appearance. Security researchers have come across a new scam that promises a “Facebook theme with music.”
According to Avast experts, scammers are trying to distribute a bogus application that allegedly allows users to change their Facebook themes and add a song to their pages.
However, in addition to playing some music and changing the Facebook page’s appearance, the application also performs some suspicious activities in the background. Namely, it starts liking pages, groups and photos.
When an Avast researcher tested it, the script pressed 32 Like buttons on his behalf. The scheme is so successful that some of the pages that the script is designed to promote have already harvested over 1 million likes.
While these like-farming scams don’t appear too dangerous since there’s no actual malicious code involved, they’re not something that should be ignored. After their pages harvest a large number of likes, the scammers can sell them on the underground market to others who want to promote shady products and services.
We’ve spotted several Facebook events advertising this “Facebook theme with music.” The scammers are actually instructing users to open a Pastebin file that contains some code. The code must be copied and pasted into the web browser’s console. This is how the background is changed and an mp3 file is played.
Users are advised to watch out for such scams. While it might look like harmless fun, those who fall for it are actually contributing to cybercriminal schemes.
In case you’re a victim of this scam, check your activity log to see which pages and photos have been liked on your behalf. Then, simply unlike them.
