Facebook users 'trolled' by World Cup mischief maker

The modified Fifa logo might have been a bit of a giveaway

Facebook users were warned to be on their guard against scammers today after it emerged that 150,000 people were taken in by a Facebook FIFA World Cup 2010 group on the site which was set up by an online mischief-maker, or 'troll'.

The user set up the group at the beginning of the tournament, facilitating numerous discussions throughout the month-long event which attracted a large following, and chose the final whistle of the World Cup final to spring his surprise.

"Well, the 2010 FIFA World Cup is over and thank f**k for that, because I F***ING HATE FOOTBALL," he wrote on the site's wall.

"Made a s**t-load of money out of this page and you dumb twats and had a good time trolling you, too; so I'd like to thank you all."

Trend Micro senior security advisor Rik Ferguson warned that, although the hoaxer appears to have had no criminal intent, the incident proves that people need to be less trusting on social networking sites.

"We take things at face value when maybe we shouldn't. In general people are too open," he said. "This group could have been used to post malicious links or video content. It would have been easy to do a Koobface-type scam."