I have now received several spam comments delivered through my Facebook wall. Here is the most recent one, from this week.
In January, TechCrunch reported on Facebook phishing scams. It looks like the fruit of those efforts are now being put to use for profit. Unfortunately, it may be time for Facebook to add a “flag spam” option on the comment edit menu…
12 Comments
August 15, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Why is this guy your friend? If I get a spam message from a friend he’d know right away I’m not happy with it and eventually I’d remove him/her from my social network.
If anything spammer friends will teach us to be very select when accepting who to connect with.
August 15, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Alberto, my friend is not doing it. His account has been hijacked — someone else is using his account to do this. I have un-friended him on FB as he has changed his password a few times and contacted FB to try to figure out what is going on.
August 16, 2008 at 4:03 am
Mike, you have too many FB friends, anyway… What’s one less?
August 18, 2008 at 6:27 am
I’ve seen this with two of my friend’s accounts. One of the accounts has been deactivated and I’m waiting to getting a call from that friends (they’re half way across the world). The other is in London and her account has been spamming a lot of people. I sent her a SMS text message so hopefully she’ll change her password soon. I’m waiting and watching to see what comes of this issue.
August 19, 2008 at 11:12 pm
About 1/3 of the stories in my News Feed are spam right now. I’m surprised that I haven’t seen more written about this as it’s a significant, and recent, issue.
August 20, 2008 at 6:43 pm
One person’s news story is another person’s spam.
I like the TV show Mad Men, and I keep telling people that. Am I spamming? Depends on who you ask.
On the other hand, the phish/spam attack you’re talking about in this post is something most people would agree is spam. And you’re right, it seems to be happening on Facebook a lot more than it should.
August 20, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Adam,
I was focused on the obvious spam problem.
On your specific example, perhaps I can provide some guidance? Marketing Lost is not spam while pushing Mad Men is clearly spam. If you require further assistance, please let me know
August 22, 2008 at 1:16 am
Haha, thanks for the clarification Mike!
Today I noticed two phisherspams on Matt Cohler’s wall. The FacebookPhisherSpammer is getting more aggressive.
There is a Facebook group to warn people but it only has 76 members:
http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=30566189401
I posted a link to this post from that group’s wall.
August 25, 2008 at 12:00 pm
[...] the past few weeks spam has increased on Facebook and as Adam Rifkin wrote, even Matt Cohler had two spam posts on his wall. What is this new type of spam? Through [...]
August 26, 2008 at 2:58 pm
This happened to me and now my account is closed - no chance to change my password, nothing - a friend’s account was hijacked, I opened the e-mail, thinking it was from my friend and the next morning when I tried to log in, I got a message that my account had been deactivated by an administrator because *I* was spamming. I sent e-mails to facebook’s administrative e-mail addresses to explain the situation, but I have not gotten a response. I know it’s a little pathetic - but I keep in touch with friends from home on there, and I had about 50 photo albums, that are now all gone (yes, I have the pictures on my external hard drive, but they were organized and commented on.) Needless to say, it’s a bit upseting - as is starting from scratch again!!
If facebook would at least acknowledge that they recieved my e-mails and were working on the situation I would feel a little better.
August 29, 2008 at 1:40 am
Have you seen the one about them deleting your account unless your forward the message to 15 friends. It’s actually pretty funny.
I posted it up here:
http://techburner.com/2008/08/26/facebook-forward-spamming/
September 18, 2008 at 2:45 pm
My account started spamming my people on my friends list, after i changed my password everything was fine for a while and then one day it started again, i accordingly deleted my account.
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