A new research has revealed that Facebook users are still falling for age-old tricks employed by scammers. The research also claims that even well-educated folks are falling for such scams because of their inappropriate and dangerous behaviour at times on the social network.
The research by experts over at Bitdefender, spanning two years, analysed over 850,000 scams to come up with top 5 and common “social e-threats” that tends to fool gullible users because of their self-interest or curiosity that tempts them to click on suspicious links or download malware-infested software.
Some of the salient findings of the research are as follows:
- Nearly half of all social media users fall prey to scams that claims to allow them to see who viewed their profile. Out of all these profile view scams, the most popular is the one that claims to allow users to see if ex-boyfriends or girlfriends have stalked them online.
- Nearly 33 per cent of scams target users through features that the social network doesn’t even provide including dislike buttons, different timeline colours, among others.
- 16.5 per cent of scams are related to bogus giveaways that appeal to bargain-hunters among Facebook’s user base.
- Next in line is the celebrity sex tapes scams that account for 7.5 per cent of scams.
- Finally, atrocity videos – those using horrendous images such as suffering children or maimed animals or tortured women to garner attention – account for almost 1 per cent of all scams.
[poll id=”16″]
Bitdefender is advising users regularly update their operating system, antivirus solution and other software to avert likely hacking attempts.
Further users are also advised to steer clear of Facebook surveys, viewing videos that first ask them to share or like a page or website, and not install updates or codecs or plugins that the alleged viral video requests.
