Facebook Scammers Offer Secret Cows for Adoption

A new Facebook affiliate marketing scheme tricks users into spamming their friends and family by promissing them the opportunity to adopt a rare FarmVille cow. However, instead of receiving the virtual domestic animal, victims get the chance to buy useless stuff for the benefit of the scammers.

With hundreds of millions of active users, Facebook is no doubt a true paradise for spammers. Unfortunately, the increased prevalence of affiliate marketing scams on the social networking website, suggests that despite all the awareness raised by security experts and the media, a lot of users still fall for simple social engineering tricks.

Security researchers from Sunbelt Software warn that one of the latest schemes to take advantage of credulous Facebook users is using a FarmVille lure. This scam starts with an account called Happy Days, who's profile page claims that people can adopt a limited number of secret FarmVille cows.

Users who click on the Secret Cow tab, will see a pop-up informing them that this offer is only available for a limited time, more precisely 1 hour and 18 minutes (this value doesn't change). There is also a dialog box asking them "Do you want to adopt The Secret Cow?" with "Yes" and "No" options.

Clicking the "Yes" button will ask users to publish an update promoting the scam on their wall. If they accept, they learn that this is apparently only the first part in their quest to own a virtual cow. The second part is a choice between taking a survey and signing up to try or buy something. A list of available offers is presented to them.

Sunbelt's Christopher Boyd points out a worrying fact – that people are not only falling for this scam, but they are intentionally "Liking" it. At the time of his report there were 31,769 people who willingly pressed the "Like" button without even being asked to do it.

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