Facebook warns of recent wave of spam

NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook said Wednesday that it has stopped most of the spam that has flooded many users' pages with pictures showing graphic sex and violence.

The social-networking company urged its 800 million-plus users to remain vigilant to keep their accounts from being hijacked.

Social-networking sites are popular targets for spammers because people are more likely to trust and share content that comes from their "friends." This makes spam, scams and viruses easier to spread.

Although the way the latest spam messages spread isn't new, their content — jarring violence and graphic pornography rather than links to get a free iPod shuffle — might have upset users more than usual. In recent days, they have complained on Twitter and their own Facebook pages.

Facebook said no user data or accounts were compromised during the attack.

The latest attack tricked users into pasting and malicious links into the address bars in their Web browsers. This exploited a browser vulnerability that caused them to unknowingly share the graphic content with their Facebook friends.

The content spreads further when the friends then click on these links, thinking that it was posted by the user on purpose.

The company said users should never cut and paste unknown code into a browser's address bar. They should always use an up-to-date browser and report any suspicious content on the site.

Facebook did not immediately say which browsers were affected

Facebook said it built enforcement mechanisms to quickly shut down the malicious pages and accounts that attempt to exploit the vulnerability.

"Our team responded quickly and we have eliminated most of the spam caused by this attack," Facebook said in a statement. "We are now working to improve our systems to better defend against similar attacks in the future."

Facebook already scans links against security databases and blocks those known to lead to spam. But the company says spammers can get around those protections by tricking users into pasting harmful links directly into Web browsers.

The company says fewer than 5 percent of its users experience spam on a given day, and less than 4 percent of content shared on Facebook is spam.

Source: The Associated Press

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Facebook spam virus bombarding users with graphic images

Facebook users, beware: There is a nasty virus quickly spreading across the social network that floods accounts with gruesome images of bestiality, hardcore pornography, self-mutilation and a variety of other very-NSFW pictures, reports Emil Protalinski at ZDnet. Facebook has confirmed the presence of the virus, and says it is currently investigating the matter.

"Facebook is aware of these reports and we are investigating the issue," said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement.

According to The Christian Post, which first reported the virus, the nasty cyber attack maybe be the work of Anonymous, whose members have previously vowed to launch an attack on the social network as retribution for "selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world." The involvement of Anonymous is so far unconfirmed.

While we have not yet been exposed to the spam virus ourselves, others say the problem is rampant. Actress Courtney Zito tells The Christian Post, "I have 5000 friends. My feed is littered with porn. I can't even check my news feed with anyone around because of it."

Other users have taken to Twitter to report their exposure to the virus, which appears to spam users' friends with the violent and pornographic images after they click on a malicious link.

"What is all the crap on Facebook now?" writes Twitter users @_Ms_Ash. "I can't even go on there without seeing porn or gory violence. Its disgusting."

"Yep looks to me like facebook has been hacked on some level," writes Twitter user @SMASHGORDON_FTW. "[M]Y entire news feed is filled with violence and porn."

Here are instructions for what to do if your account is hacked by this virus. (You must be logged in to Facebook to view this link.)

Source: Digital Trends

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Facebook adds granular controls to better police spam apps

In a bid to reduce the amount of spam on its social network, Facebook has begun integrating new controls that assist developers in maintaining their apps, also introducing granular restrictions to stop certain parts of an app from issuing spam updates.

In a blog post on its Developer blog, Facebook said it had amended the hundreds of filters in place to reduce the number of erroneously disabled apps. Identifying the impact that the disabled apps had on both Facebook and its developers, the social giant has implemented new feedback metrics into a developer’s “News Feed” to highlight both positive and negative user feed so that app creators can monitor opinions of their apps to better provide services for their users.

Facebook has also said that it wants to exercise control over just the spammy parts of apps. To better cope with this, the company has updated its systems to detect negative feedback but then only disable the impacted social channel, not the entire app.

Facebook explains:

For example, if an app is generating a lot of negative feedback via chat messages, we will take action only on that app’s ability to publish to chat but otherwise leave the app intact. Developers will be able to appeal these granular enforcement actions.

If Facebook needs to disable an app, after it has received negative feedback across multiple channels, it can now place the app into disabled mode instead of deleting it. Whilst the app is in disabled mode, it will not be accessible to users but it will allow the developer to access and test the app, edit settings and view insights.

The social network will move from channel enforcements to a ranking model in the future, which will see apps distributed on their quality score. Good quality apps will be highlighted while bad apps are seen by very few.

Source: The Next Web

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