[Robin]

Last week Facebook shut down a bunch of fake profiles because they were part of a large malware attack. Each contained a link to what was supposed to be a video but was actually a scam for a phony anti-spyware program. It would show a fake virus alert. This scam was used by its authors to sell software that is not needed (and probably doesn't work!), steal credit card numbers and even download spyware onto a user's computer.

This scam is not overly new. The part that struck and concerned me is that in the news story I read, one of the experts suggests that the cyber criminals have mass-produced the Facebook profiles and, perhaps, have cracked the Captcha. Captcha is that hard to read text that is used to help secure a variety of websites so that it is humans and not computer drones accessing them.

This is concerning as if it is true it means more and more cyber criminals could be running rampant online, especially in social networking communities. As this where a number of young people go online it is of a great concern.

Robin

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