Stolen Facebook ‘Likes’ Help Advertise Scams

When Internet users come across a website that’s recommended by a large number of people with the help of Facebook widgets, the specific site is considered to be more trustworthy. Cybercriminals took note of this and began using this technique to promote their malicious schemes.

Most of us, at one point or another, were presented with a classic Make money from home scam which promises big winnings from the comfort of our own home. At first, there were simple sites and later they were upgraded to resemble legitimate news publications to make everything seem more legitimate.

Since they realized that this method wasn’t working too well either, scammers added a little something extra to make sure the number of victims will increase.

Zscaler researchers discovered a classic make money website that displayed a Facebook Like button saying that “214,217 people recommend this.”

This is not a totally new technique, but what we’ve seen so far were pictures instead of real Facebook widgets. This time everything is real and anyone can click on the button, but there’s a catch to the whole thing.

The crooks managed to obtain this effect by embedding the Like widget from CBS’s Facebook page into their own site. This is possible because Facebook doesn’t check if the domains correspond, thus allowing fraudsters to trick their visitors into thinking that a large number of people approve with their scheme.

I advise you to be on the lookout for these improved schemes since the chances for you ending up with one in your inbox are fairly high.

Even if the website is very similar to a genuine news site such as BBC, CNN or NBC, the URL from the browser’s address bar can always give away its true identity. Also, don’t be fooled by addresses that look like www.malicious_domain.com/bbc.