Bitdefender Warns Public About New Facebook Scam With Aggressive Spreading-mechanism-2090

Fake Facebook Page Admin Notifications trick users into revealing email and postal addresses

BUCHAREST, Romania – May 6, 2011 - BitDefender®, an award-winning provider of innovative Internet security solutions, iswarning the public of a new Facebook scam with an aggressive spreading mechanism.

Users of the social networking site are informed through Facebook’s notification system and by e-mail that they have been made administrators of an unknown page and are directed to click on a link that takes them to a fake Facebook page. Once a user has landed on the fake Facebook page, they are re-directed to a different, malicious page where they are asked to provide their e-mail and shipping addresses in order to take part in a test session of the new Apple iPad2. The scam states that Apple is giving away a total of 10,000 iPad2’s for review.

“This scam is very aggressive and efficient at the same time because it uses two Facebook specific spreading mechanisms, which ensures high visibility - notifications and direct e-mail,” commented Catalin Cosoi, Head of BitDefender Online Threats Lab. “The main social engineering elements are, on the one hand, getting users curious about why they were made administrators of a Facebook page and, second, using the Applie iPad as bait. In this case, the device is supposed to be given away for free, but sent through mail for testing purposes.”

BitDefender urges the public not to click on any suspicious administrator links provided through Facebook and to not provide any personal information. Also, if you find yourself as the administrator of a malicious page, you will need to remove yourself from the administrators’ list of that page.

Users can remove themselves from the administrators’ list of the malicious page, by following the steps provided in the following tutorial: https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=19375&ref_query=remove+admin

More information about this scam can be found on BitDefender’s

http://www.malwarecity.com/blog/i-dub-thee-admin-of-page-x-arise-and-get-your-scam-1069.html

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All product and company names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.

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