Like/Share to See the Video Scams on Facebook

Story:

About the Like/Share to See the Video scam stories on Facebook that appear every now and then.

Picture of Like, Share to See the Video Scams on Facebook — Like, Share to See the Video Scams on Facebook

Analysis:

Facebook has been a popular social networking giant in the recent years that reaches millions of audiences globally. It has been successful in connecting people around the world, but on the other side, there have been many scammers and cyber criminals who misuse this wide reach. Today, we will brief you here on the Like/Share to See the Video Scams that keep surfacing on Facebook every now and then.

Why and How

There are millions of Facebook users around the world who use the social networking platform daily for variety of purposes. The scammers try to exploit this user interest and come up with various ways (stories) to lure and mislead the unsuspecting users. In recent years, the ‘Like/Share to See a Video’ has been the popular kind of click-jacking scam they employ to entice the users into malicious activity. It is so because when more people click on a story (liking or sharing); it goes on to spread virally on Facebook.

The scam stories appear on Facebook with intriguing pictures and/or videos, sometimes even on web pages mimicking Facebook. These click-jacking scams on Facebook usually come with hidden online surveys, download software (that may include malware/virus) and promotion and sales of other marketing/affiliate products/programs. The scammers can also come up with ways to steal the personal information of unsuspecting users and may even try to grab money from them. In some cases, scammers utilize this click-jacking method in Facebook “Likes for Sale” schemes, wherein hackers generate fake Facebook likes for cash programmatically. The hackers create fake accounts for this, or even hack into real accounts in order to use them for sending spam and acquiring more likes. An example of such Like-jacking activity has been seen in the past where scammers offered Facebook users a one time trial of new emotions/smileys.

Types of Stories

The like/share to see a video scams on Facebook generally target celebrity deaths, private videos of girls, disturbing incidents & accidents, current, popular events, etc. A set of such stories in circulation in recent years is listed below, along with their respective analysis:

Robin Williams’ Last Video Saying Goodbye
Live Shocking Footage of an Elephant Head Broken by Explosive Mines
Sylvester Stallone Died in a Horrible Car Accident
She Did This Publicly in her High School
Facebook Video – Chuck Norris Dies at Age 71

More recently, a story circulating on Facebook asks the viewer to click the picture of a 17 year old girl lying on sofa to view a video of her, and then there is also a ‘video’ on a page mimicking Facebook that claims “Peshawar Attack footage from Inside the School leaked“. Another story doing rounds online comes up with a claim that an ‘Unbelievable Creature Found in South Africa‘. You can view the pictures of the stories in Image Gallery.

In most of the aforementioned cases, there won’t be any such videos claimed, but for the click-jack scamming! In some cases, there would be unrelated or somewhat related videos though. So Facebook users should be careful when clicking on stories that come with pictures/videos with compelling headlines. One way to identify if any of such stories are Facebook click-jacking scams is to place your mouse over the story/picture/video and check the destination URL at the bottom of your browser for authentic links. If you happen to come across any such scams, you can either simply remove them from your timeline or report them to Facebook.