There’s a new scam wreaking havoc in cyberspace with real world consequences.
One phrase is a dead giveaway that the sender could have malicious intent.
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Phishing messages or emails are designed to look like traditional online interactions – but they can do irreversible damage to a person’s digital life.
They come from seemingly harmless or even familiar contacts and platforms.
A Facebook message reading “look what I found” followed by a link is sure to get your attention but experts warn against opening its contents.
It goes a step further as the scheme involves messaging people from real, but compromised, Facebook pages – meaning it will genuinely look like your friend is trying to DM you something.
Privacy experts tested the scam and found that it leads to two locations: false software companies or a dummy Facebook login page.
The first tries to bait users into installing buggy malware that can damage a computer’s security like a disease.
The other directs entrapped users into entering their Facebook login details – which is likely how the con artists are finding host pages to spread the scam from.
A cybersecurity expert told LADBible that clicking a link does not mean the user is sure to be hacked.
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“Note that if someone is tricked by a message and they click a scam’s link, they still might not be victims in the end if they can realize it’s a scam by keeping an eye on the website loading process, which would reveal the redirection to a malicious website,” cybersecurity expert Leslie Sikos said.
Focus on the cadence with which your friends send messages – do they use emojis? Do they tee up messages with teasers? Think to yourself: “is this how they would really try to share a video?”
On the internet, it’s best to be skeptical.
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