14 DAY TRIAL // A Facebook group counting 1,5 million users is riddled with messages containing unsolicited links and advertisements. The group has been originally set up to protest against a major redesign in Facebook's user interface.
In 2008, Facebook rolled out a new design for its user interface, which apparently was not too popular amongst the users of the social networking giant. In fact, one Adam Stanborough was so unhappy with the new look, that he decided to create a group called “5,000,000 against the new version of Facebook.”
The protest group proved to be very successful and reports were estimating at the time that around 200,000 users were joining it every day. The group's impressive momentum even had newspapers writing about it. However, even with this massive support, it eventually failed to achieve its goal, as the Facebook administration remained unmoved and stuck to the criticized interface.
The group's ranks have significantly attenuated since then, but it still counts some 1,500,000 users who are greeted with a description that reads “PLEASE NOTE ... Facebook looks like it will keep the new facelift, however please read below to see how i have now made over 130 K USD$ in 3 months, and now i want to share with you how i did so you to CAN MAKE MONEY !”
The message also claims that, while a lot of people have lost their jobs due to the economic recession, “others have quietly been making thousands on the Internet.” It then links to a page, through the TinyURL redirector. The page tells the story of one Mack Michaels, and tries to entice users into signing up with a wonder, money-making system.
But the scheme advertised in the group's description is just the beginning. Messages promoting other products, such as dating and seducing guides, are also sent to the 1,5 million users, who at one point had a good reason for signing up with the group. “Spammers are leaving marketing messages and web links strewn across the Facebook group like the graffiti left by teenagers in an abandoned house,” Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos, describes the current situation.
It is not clear as to what might have happened with the group. Hackers stealing the owner's account credentials could be a reasonable explanation, but so is the possibility that Adam Stanborough might have decided to make some profit from the otherwise useless Facebook group lying around.
Some could even go as far as to suggest that this has been his intention from the very start, but, regardless of the reason, there's a lesson to be learned from this, as Graham Cluley explains. “If you're on Facebook, maybe now would be a good time to return to some of the groups you may have joined long ago and don't visit anymore, and decide if you want to permanently cut your ties before squatting spammers take control,” the researcher notes.