Wherever I May Roam…

The method used by those application is technically called Clickjacking, but my use of the term Facebook Malware or even Facebook Virus is more readily and easily accepted by novice users (read: my mom or my wife) to describe malicious applications bent on using the users account to spread itself and gather detailed (and even sensitive) information about the user. Facebook Malware or Facebook Virus is a term they can relate to.

Girl Killed Herself After Dad Posted On Wall is the most insidious Facebook application I’ve encountered. I’ve been seeing it posted on my friends profiles for months and it seems like Facebook engineers are helpless against this. The application goes by many names – World News, Shocking News, Never Txt Again, Txt and Die, etc. It’s also run from multiple servers, so if Facebook blocks this application, another one will pop up running on a different server with a different name. I admire the developers’ tenacity on pushing this application. Admirable, but annoying to no end.

Facebook users are notoriously naive when it comes to security awareness, and a certain percentage of users will always end up falling for this kind of social hack.
Michael Arrington

There are also other similar malware that, thankfully, Facebook managed to weed out. But if you do find yourself clicking the link to the application page or another websites, STOP Immediately! And calmly hit the Back button on your browser. It’s not worth satisfying your curiosity.

Most importantly, DO NOT CLICK ON ANYTHING ON THAT PAGE. Some developers managed to implement an ingenious hack that’ll redraw the Like button and follow your mouse around effectively making the whole page a Like button.

Also check out the Facebook Security Page for more information on how to remove those nasties.