14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook scammers are taking advantage of FarmVille's popularity again to trick users into taking surveys by luring them with a news page for the game.
For a lot of time, FarmVille was the most popular game on Facebook, and even though it has been overthrown by CityVille, it still has tens of millions of active players.
The game's huge following makes it a very attractive theme for scams and many campaigns have already used its name so far.
All Facebook reports that the latest scam to employ a FarmVille-related lure takes users to a rogue page called "What’s New On FarmVille?" which entices them with a 200 Farm Cash bonus.
This is a more traditional scam in the sense that it doesn't involve an app specially designed for spamming purposes. Instead it asks users to manually advertise the page.
Clicking on the button to accept the free Farm Cash bonus prompts users to complete one of several surveys first.
Sometimes called offers, these "surveys" are part of affiliate marketing schemes which, in the best case, try to gather information about people for future marketing campaigns.
However, the most deceitful of them, attempt to subscribe victims to premium rate services billed on their mobile phone or to sign them up for non-free product trials.
Scammers get paid a hefty commission for every user who completes one of these surveys and some affiliate marketing companies are well aware that their traffic comes from scams.
Some of the previously FarmVille-themed campaigns we have seen promised special in-game characters like a dancing snowman or a secret cow. Free Farm Cash lures similar to this one have also been observed in the past.
Users are strongly advised to refrain from giving applications access to post from their walls or manually propagate spam messages themselves in order to gain access to content
Also, campaigns that ask users to complete surveys for security purposes or in order to win something, are most likely scams.