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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HIDDEN CAMERA ON PERSONA, NOW INFLUENCING EVIDENCES

Big medias just escaped the news like nothing happened. You can think it as result of Kaniz Almas’s good relation with them. They are also trying to influence police and the woman who reported about it to the police. Persona is ready to provide any facility to take the report back from police. That is somehow working too, because there is no case filed even after 24 hours of the incident. The husband of that woman says, “If I filed a case I have to submit those naked videos to court. No one like to show pictures of his naked wife to anyone.” 

Some police official without disclosing the name says there is nothing bad in the video that recovered. As there was a big gap from reporting the police to when police reach, Persona guys may have deleted some parts before police came. Kanij Almas declared they will not remove cameras, they are for safety reasons.

But Bangladesh youth is actively working against this unacceptable behavior from a respected person and a company. Blogs and social networks are fully buzzing with the topic. But Persona is really working hard to save it’s image. At first it deleted all negative comments and banned commenter of it’s Facebook pages and then even they deleted all the whole Facebook pages and activities.

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