Facebook Dislike button scam
By Joe Elvin
17/05/2011
Facebook users are being warned against a 'enable dislike button' scam which is circulating around the social networking website.
The message, which is being spammed around profiles at a tremendous rate, encourages users to copy Javascript into their browser in order to install a 'dislike' button on the website.
However, rather than install this new feature, the URL instead copies the same message onto the profiles of all the users' Facebook friends.
It is thought that the creators of the scam are benefiting financially on a pay-per-click basis but sources on CRN.com have warned that the same sort of scam could easily be used to infect IT management systems with malware.
CRN's online journalist, Stefanie Hoffman, confirmed: "Viral trickery has the same potential to run malicious code on victims' machines, which could cause their systems to crash in a denial of service attack or enable hackers install malware that could completely take control of their computers to access and steal sensitive data."
It is thought that the scammers were able to bypass Facebook's security by replacing the standard 'share' option with a link called 'enable dislike button'.
However users shouldn't be taken in, as sources from IT security blog Sophos.com predicted that there was unlikely to be a 'dislike' feature on the social networking website any time in the near future.
