Apr 1, 2011 07:30 GMT  ·  By

Security researchers warn that localized Facebook scams are becoming increasingly common as spammers attempt to reach as many users as possible.

Kaspersky Lab's Christian Funk describes a recent German scam that lured users with a video of a roller coaster accident at one of Germany's largest amusement parks.

"Hey have you seen that? Unbelievable. Couldn't even watch it till the end. Will NEVER ever ride rollercoasters again," the spammed message reads in English.

The link takes users to a page claiming to have over 425,000 fans, which is obviously false. The page has a button to access the video, which when clicked, prompts users to give a rogue app access to their profile.

Users who do so will begin relaying spam messages from their profiles without their knowledge. They will then be asked to take a survey.

These surveys earn scammers money through affiliate marketing programs. Many companies who pay commission for this traffic are scammed too, because they don't know it's being generated artificially.

There are several reasons why spammers are moving towards localized scams. One of them is an unexploited market segment.

"About 70% of all Facebook users are based outside the US which means more than 350 million people, according to official Facebook statistics," Mr. Funk says.

"These users don't speak English as their native language for the most part. For cybercriminals, this means that they miss the larger part of their target audience," he explains.

Another reason might be that since they haven't been targeted so much, non-English spreakers are unaware of these scams and are easy prey.

Finally, it might also be that scam detection algorithms used by Facebook's automated systems don't work as well for foreign languages as they do for English.