As friendship and love lead to the exchange of Valentine’s Day gifts, some very unwanted online scams are spreading on the popular social media site, Facebook, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
All Facebook reports three scams. The first one mentions a possible Valentine’s Day date. Talk about looking for love in the wrong places!
Another gives a promise for a video of an Italian teacher in adult poses. That one may also feature Italian language text. Be careful of this proposition. It may be infected with a virus called “Mal/FBJack-A” that spreads on Facebook. By clicking, users will spread the spam campaign to other users, All Facebook warns.
These scams go by the names “Valentine Locator, Fun Valentines, Valentine’s Day,” etc.
Another scam is an application called “Van Gogh Museum’s Photos.” It has nothing to do with a museum in Amsterdam. The application, according to All Facebook, led to a page called “I was logged in to Facebook for XXXX hours in 2010.” The site leads to a marketing survey.
With all of these scams on Facebook, it sounds like a good idea that President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have told their young daughters: “No Facebook.” TechZone360’s Juliana Kenny reports that Sasha and Malia Obama do not have Facebook pages and won’t be getting them soon. The two young ladies are ages 9 and 12. The First Lady said that Facebook is “not something they need,” and it will have to wait until her daughters get older.
In an interview with NBC’s “Today Show,” Michelle Obama commented that she is “not a big fan of young kids having Facebook.”
Scams are not limited to online. TechZone360 reported on a phone scam recently where someone calls from an Indian call center, and starts by saying something like: "Hello, my name is Ranjeef and I'm calling from Microsoft's Windows operating system.”
"We've noticed, over the last few days, that your machine has slowed down and think it has been infected with a virus. … Please visit the website address I am about to give you, follow my instructions and we'll download a diagnostic tool.”
The caller may even ask for a credit card number. Users should have hung up the phone early on with this scam. Microsoft does not make cold calls. The scam will lead to the user downloading a virus and maybe even giving out their confidential credit card info. Bad idea!
Ed Silverstein is a TechZone360 contributor. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Jennifer Russell
