14 DAY TRIAL // Security researchers warn that millions of users have been invited to attend fake Facebook events that are used by cybercrooks for survey spam.
One of these rogue events is called "Who blocked you from his friend list ?" and already has over 165,000 confirmed attendees.
What's interesting about this spam event is the number of people whose response is still pending, over 10,300,000.
There have also been around 70,000 users who answered that they might be attending and 880,000 who declined. We can, therefore, conclude that around 1 in 6 people decided to attend.
The actual spam is inserted in the event's description and instructs users to visit a link in order to access the promised content.
However, the link takes them to a spoofed Facebook page which displays a dialog asking them to participate in a survey before continuing. For every user that agrees to do so, the scammers earn a hefty commission.
Some of these surveys are part of legitimate affiliate marketing campaigns that are abused, but others can be malicious and try to sign up users to expensive services.
Another event spotted by security researchers from Sophos uses the title "You will NEVER send a TEXT after seeing this VIDEO!" while experts from Trend Micro warn of one called "How to Find Out Who’s Viewing Your Profile."
It seems that since Facebook has gotten better at suspending the rogue apps commonly used in survey scams, spammers have discovered new conduits that are not monitored as strictly.
"It would be great if Facebook was being more proactive in shutting down these obviously bogus events, as currently it's far too easy for the scammers to fill their pockets through schemes like this," says Graham Cluley, senior security consultant at Sophos.