14 DAY TRIAL // Security researchers urge users to stop reposting warnings about an alleged virus connected to messages regarding a girl who killed herself, because they are misleading and unfounded. There are some survey scams going around which employ that theme though.
“WARNING:THERE IS A VIRUS GOING AROUND AGAIN, IF YOU SEE A GIRL WHO KILLED HERSELF OVER SOMETHING HER FATHER WROTE ON HER WALL DO NOT OPEN IT, IT IS A VIRUS AND IT WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO DELETE IT, PLEASE PASS THIS ON BEFORE SOMEONE OPENS IT. (IT IS A SELF REPLICATING TROJAN”, a message that is rapidly spreading on Facebook reads.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at UK-based antivirus vendor Sophos, asks people to stop sharing, likeling and otherwise perpetuating it, as instead of helping anyone they might help generate confusion. “For those who care about such things, viruses and Trojans are different types of malware - it's not possible to have a virus which is a Trojan. And by their very nature, Trojans cannot be self-replicating. Furthermore, there's no such thing as malware that you can't remove so the claim that it 'will not allow you to delete it' is nonsense too. I'm going to say this very simply: Please stop forwarding this hoax to your friends,” the security expert writes on his blog.
However, people should be advised that there are some viral scams going around on Facebook, which make use of the lure mentioned in the warning message. These have the purpose of directing users to rogue pages, which trick them into spamming their friends and family and earn money for the scammers by participating in surveys.
One such a page, called 'This “Dad” must be psychho to write this on his daugther profile !!!!' was liked by almost 600,000 users, despite offering nothing in return except surveys. Other similar pages claim that it was the girl's mother who pushed her to suicide, but none of them infect people with a virus or trojan.
This is the second time in recent weeks when a misleading security warning message is perpetuated by Facebook users. The previous one spoke of a “trojan worm called Knob Face” (likely a reference to the Koobface malware family).
It's great to see the community trying to fight back at the cybercrooks who invaded the social networking website, by raising awareness. However, it would be a lot more helpful if these viral alerts would actually contain real and useful information.
If you want to keep yourself informed about the latest Facebook threats you should know that most antivirus vendors now have their own Facebook pages through which they're releasing regular updates. Feel free to follow some these pages and repost those warnings to your friends and family members instead.
You can follow the editor on Twitter @lconstantin