By: MJ Gonzales | Executive Chronicles
Clicking the “like” button on Facebook seems harmless. It may let your friends giddy or know you are reading their posts. Unfortunately, overly doing it without being analytic of the content may also harm your account and use it by scammers for their modus operandi called like-farming.
How is it possible if you like and share only interesting goody-goody posts? Commonly the stories or images with emotional tones are useful for “like-farming” scammers. Perhaps, you see something “click like if you believe in this” if this person is inspiring or if you agree that love conquers all. Other sample is “share if you want to win” or have three years luck if you like this picture. Sometimes you are challenge to just get likes or see who are your friends who believe in the magic. What scammers get from this?
According to USA Today’s report, “This gives the scammer more eyeballs for posts that trick people out of information or send them to malicious downloads.” The more likes and shares the more the post or page become visible and goes at the top of your newsfeed and somehow people don’t notice the changes they do. Thus, it’s good pay to attention who or where the original post come from just to be safe, and check if the post is true or not.
“They may also sell the page and information that was collected from the ‘likes’ with a more direct threat of gaining access in an attempt to gather credit card numbers that may be stored for certain Facebook apps, passwords or other personal information,” the Better Business Bureau shared in a statement. “New pages created from gathered data may be used to spread malicious software to compromise data or spread malware. The best approach is to think before you like.”
