Facebook ‘fake video’ virus doing the rounds

Article regards of The North Coast Courier.

Using a series of seemingly legit URL addresses, a recent video spam has left many South African victims unable to get rid of a virus which has spread its venom through Messenger.

A Trojan virus, it starts off as a message in Messenger, sent from someone on your friend’s list, which looks like this – the blank part would be the receiver’s name:

A smiley face? A Bitly link? No worries, let’s click.

According to Good Things Guy, these type of Facebook Trojans “operate on the botnet principle, and they can quickly become very massive with their primary purpose to steal your information,” including:

• IP and other System Info
• Facebook account information
• Browsing history
• E-mail accounts and other passwords

And how do you get rid of the malware? Here are a few steps:

• If you receive one of these messages, DO NOT OPEN it and inform the friend who appeared to send the video that their account has been hacked.
• If you do find that your Facebook profile has been compromised by the scam, you need to secure your account as soon as possible.
• Be sure to change your password and run an activity check to spot any suspicious activity on your page.
• You can also remove any downloaded malware by going into Facebook Settings & Apps, Websites and Plugins & Select Disable to protect your account from unauthorised access of third party apps.
• While you’re there, take a moment to look at all the apps connected to your Facebook and remove any that are outdated or unnecessary.
• It is also recommended to run any anti-virus or malware programs to rid your device of any bugs that may have been downloaded to your system as a result of the download.
• No doubt that’s valuable information up there, so bookmark this article for the future, because, as Information Security specialists like to say, it’s not “if” you’re going to get hacked, it’s “when” – and we know Facebook scams are only set to get more and more sneaky.

Source: 2OceansVibeNews