Why Is This Guy Asking Me if I Know You Facebook Video Spam

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A Facebook scam that has been circulating for years seems to be making a comeback. And if yous fall for it, y'all'll take your Facebook login info stolen past the scammers, who can then hack your account and use it for a variety of nefarious purposes.

The scam works by tricking Facebook users into clicking a link to a video. The video will oftentimes have some variation of "Is this yous?" or "Did yous make this video?" in the description to pique your involvement, and will likely come from one of your friends (who already cruel for this scam and had their credentials stolen).

If y'all click on the link, you lot'll exist taken to a fake Facebook login page with a message about confirming your information before y'all tin access the video. It is pretty obvious the folio is fake if you find the URL at the pinnacle. Only if you're non paying attention and you enter your info here, y'all've just given the scammers what they need to take over your account.

As a final insult, you won't exist taken to the video (which never existed in the first place), but dumped into a spammy affiliate advertisement network for NSFW games, sketchy app downloads and survey scams. I've seen a few valid apps, too, such as Norton Secure VPN on Google Play, but these companies take no part in the scam (after I notified Symantec, Norton's parent visitor, about the app'due south inclusion, a spokesperson told me "Upon learning of this issue, we worked with our mobile advertising partner to quickly identify and blacklist the bad actor responsible for this threat. We are likewise working to identify consumers who may have been impacted to help them with whatever residuum effects.")

The best course of activeness if you lot get one of these video links from a friend is to not click information technology and notify your friend by telephone or email, if possible, that their business relationship may have been compromised. It's also possible the video was sent from a friend'south cloned Facebook account that a scammer used to friend you in the past.

If you lot fabricated the mistake of entering your credentials on that simulated login folio, y'all should immediately modify your Facebook password earlier the scammers have a chance to get in. This would besides be an excellent time to consider setting up Two-factor authentication for Facebook and so you won't lose admission to your business relationship if you fall for some other phishing scam in the futurity.

And if the scammers accept already taken control of your Facebook account, you lot'll demand to become through Facebook's account recovery process to regain access.

Author's note v/25/2021: A number of comments have come in indicating that their accounts were compromised even though they didn't not attempt to log in. I've researched this issue quite a bit and, despite nearly 2 years having passed since I commencement wrote this story, I still haven't seen whatever credible bear witness that malware or other hacks are beingness exploited to steal user credentials through this scam. Everything I've read from security research sources indicates that this is a pure phishing scam. And given how much printing this has received, I'm sure it is too something that Facebook has researched and would have patched if it were a security hole on their end.

And so how come all the reports of exploits where people didn't log in? Here's what I think may exist happening:

one) People did log in, but it's such a natural action for them that they don't fifty-fifty remember that they did.

2) Your account was already compromised, either through a previous phishing attempt or because you have weak password security that allowed an assaulter to access your account through a data alienation from another source.

3) These requests are coming from cloned accounts

4) You didn't log in, but did click on a malware download (e.k., fake Flash update to view video) that compromised your system.

For more insight on what is happening, go to your Facebook Settings > Security and Login to see where and when you have been logged into your Facebook business relationship.

If I uncover any new data nearly malware associated with this scam, I will update the article.

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Source: https://www.techlicious.com/blog/facebook-is-this-you-video-scam/