Ask HN: What's up with Facebook friends liking virus sites? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's up with Facebook friends liking virus sites?

4 pointspaul92905 comments

In past few days I have noticed a ton of my friends posting links .info sites. Their headlines are sensational and catchy, as well each has a photo of something pertaining to story or photo of youtube video. Im certain these are virus sites as those posting would never post something about miley cyrus and the other sensational junk these bad actors are creating.

Anyone else notice this and is there a weak point in Facebook?

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Man, been wondering the same thing! However, I believe these sites employ some kind of like-hijack as you reach the page. I kind of clicked on one of them. Or not even that, I saw some friend liking this crap, it said the website in the post so I copy-pasted it in the address bar. Saw crap. Left. Safe-checked my profile. Nothing. But like 15 mins later I checked my profile again, bam, there it was. I had liked this friggin crap by directly visiting this site! Now I can't remember which one as I camped out on the newsfeed and marked all that crap as spam..

And the myspacification of Facebook begins.

Hijack apps.

Click on harmless looking "Login with Facebook" link to comment or access extra content on a harmless looking blog or trojan app, speed through standard dialog, sign away permission for them to update statuses, post on walls and send messages on your behalf through the Facebook API.

I've noticed Facebook getting quicker at deleting this garbage though.

I usually ignore these type of things until yesterday when I noticed that a very intelligent, technical friend of my had a post like this.

i've gotten a few of these, and I believe they are hijack apps that send the same message to all of your friends. Interesting too is how they're coming up with messages that make you wonder if it's real or not. In this day and age, you can't even trust a friend in a world that sells access to your information

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