A tempting message supposedly sent by a friend is making life miserable for Facebook Messenger users. “Look what I found” (“Look what I found”) is the issue of communication, which hides nothing more than the umpteenth phishing or identity theft attack.
The most dangerous thing is that cybercriminals manage to transform the sender into contacts of the potential victim, who have previously fallen into the trap through the same or similar means, reported 7News.
In addition to the suggestive invitation, the messages are usually accompanied by one or more emojis, as well as a link. Visiting the link implies accessing a “malicious web page that requires the user to access Facebook credentials,” the version detailed. Aside from trying to get the sensitive information, it might also try to install malware on the device.
“The scam has been known for several years, but recently it seems to be proliferating exponentially,” the Australian television station added. Something similar occurs with another communication entitled “Are you the person in the video”, which uses a very similar strategy to obtain data from the same social network.
Leslie Sikos, a cybersecurity expert at Edith Cowan University, explained that messages that appear to come from Facebook friends or contacts “are much more likely” to end in a click, as opposed to an unknown sender. “People can focus solely or primarily on the name of the sender, rather than the content of the message, regardless of whether the message appears suspicious,” she said.
Unfortunately, there are so many scams of this type that it is difficult to establish a pattern to avoid falling for the fraud. Either way, there are common elements that criminals often demonstrate. “There is no proper salutation or signature to match the style of the sender […] Scams often have inappropriate use of grammar or typographical errors that can also indicate their true nature.
He also suggested looking at fake domain names, analyzing whether that contact on the social network could share sensitive content in real life, and even the time it was sent.
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