Oct 4, 2010 06:05 GMT  ·  By

A new scam has been making the rounds on Facebook during the weekend and tricked users into taking rogue surveys by promising them free Xbox Live points.

The spammed link comes with a thumbnail displaying the Xbox Live logo and a message reading "Free 4000 Xbox Live Points Limited time promotion, get yours now!"

Visiting the link takes users to an external page hosted on blogspot.com, which is themed after the Xbox color scheme and informs them that they have to go through three steps in order to obtain the free points.

The first step is to "Like" the page, the second is to "Share" the link, which will result in a message as the previously mentioned one being posted on their wall, and the third is to participate in a survey.

Of course, there are no free points and taking one of the surveys only earns scammers money through generous affiliate marketing commissions.

In addition, most of these surveys are actually trying to deceptively sign up users to premium rate services billed to their mobile phones.

Such scams have been very active this year on social networking websites, but particularly aggressive on Facebook, who's anti-abuse teams seems to have a hard time coping with their number.

"The success and wide variety of such survey scams spreading across Facebook and other systems is one of the biggest security stories of 2010," says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos.

"You need to have your wits about you to avoid falling into the scammers' hands - always think carefully before you 'like' or 'share' a suspicious link on Facebook," he advises.

However, if you're amongst the people who did fall victim to this trick, please go to your wall, hover the mouse over the offending message and press the "Remove" button. Also, don't forget to "Unlike" the link.