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19 Aug 2010
Facebook has taken down multiple fake pages following the discovery of a major survey scam.
Security firm Sophos said that the trick spreads through the social networking site's 'Share' function, which allows people to display web pages with contacts on Facebook.
The scam offers a page called 'Top 10 funny t-shirt fails'. Clicking on the page prompts the user to fill out a short 'verification' process which opens a number of third-party survey sites.
The page uses a script to access the user's 'Share' button, reposting the link on the their news feed and putting everyone on the their friend list at risk of attack.
One of the survey sites also asks for mobile phone numbers which are used to subscribe the owner to premium text messaging services.
"Instead of tricking the user into liking something, it tricks them into using the Facebook 'Share' feature without requiring the user to acknowledge that they are sharing it," said Sophos researcher Onur Komili in a blog post.
The technique is similar to a scam spotted on Facebook earlier this year which covertly activated the user's 'Like' button to spread scam pages.
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