14 DAY TRIAL // A new survey scam is making the rounds on Facebook and tricking users into spamming their friends and family. This time the lure involves a rude hidden message allegedly hidden in the Toy Story 3 movie.
Toy Story 3 is one of the most successful movies of this summer. Even though the third installment in the Disney series premiered in June, it still has to hit the big screens in some European and Asian countries. This means it is still a subject of interest for a lot of people.
Not long ago we reported about a variety of schemes collecting personal information from users by falsely promising them the opportunity to see the full movie online for free. However, this latest Facebook Toy Story 3-themed scam takes a different approach and tries to leverage the shocking element.
"SHOCKING: RUDE HIDDEN MESSAGE IN Toy Story 3! See the SHOCKING picture! Hardly ANYONE notices this when watching Toy Story 3," the spam reads. Clicking on the included link takes users to a Facebook page claiming the hidden message will be revealed if a few steps are completed.
The first requires requires people to "Like" the page, which implicitly advertises it via their profile. Unfortunately, over 270,000 users fell for the trick and pressed the "Like" button, effectively spamming their friends and family. But the spam doesn't stop here, the second step asking users to publish the rogue message on their blog.
"The motive for this scam, which already appears to have recruited hundreds of thousands of fans, is to direct unsuspecting users to an online survey [...]. The scammers make money for the traffic they bring to the survey, and the survey-makers will benefit from collecting your data," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, explains. “Don't agree to 'like' or 'share' pages which you don't have a good reason to approve. If you have fallen for a scam like this, ensure that you delete references to it in your news feed and remove the application from the list of pages that you 'like',” the security expert advises.
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