Thursday, August 19, 2010

Beware of fake Facebook 'dislike' button

With new technologies and advances in the social realm it's bound to happen where there are programs aimed to 'attack' or otherwise fool the user into accepting something that may otherwise look harmless. While on the surface this may be true but in recent article written by CNN's John Sutter we find out that there may be more happening behind the scenes of 3rd party applications. So be sure you know what, why, how and who you are sending your personal information to. 
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(CNN) -- Lots of people think the Internet is a bit too chipper -- so much so that they'veclamored for a "dislike" button on Facebook, which, to date, only officially allows people to "like" content on its site.

Now, some social-media spoilers are trying to turn the public's desire for that dislike buttoninto a scam, according to a security researcher.

Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at the British security firm Sophos, wrote in a blog post on Monday that fake dislike buttons are going viral on Facebook.

Watch out for posts that look like this, he says: "I just got the Dislike button, so now I can dislike all of your dumb posts lol!!"

That statement on Facebook is typically followed with a link, Cluley writes, that takes people to a fake Facebook application.

Instead of installing a dislike button, Cluley says, the application uses a person's social network to continue spreading the fake program.

"If you do give the app permission to run, it silently updates your Facebook status to promote the link that tricked you in the first place, thus spreading the message virally to your Facebook friends and online contacts," he writes.