A Scary New Facebook Virus Is Sending Suss Links From Yr Mates’ Accounts

A scary new Facebook scam has popped up and while it seems to have only been reported in New Zealand so far, it’s worth watching out for because it’s spreading pretty damn quickly.

It works by sending links from your friends’ accounts via Facebook Messenger which look harmless on the surface, but will actually collect credentials and give suss folks access to your account. Once infected, your account will spread the malware further by passing on the same message to everyone on your friends list.

Posing as a YouTube link, it’ll come with a message like “this is you” or “you are in this video ??” with a sad face emoji. If you cop any of those, whatever you do, don’t be clicking on it.

There are fears the attack could even have huge effects on New Zealand businesses. We reached out to Facebook Messenger Australia to confirm whether or not the attack has reached us, but are yet to receive a response.

Unfortunately, these kind of attacks are becoming more and more sophisticated, fooling even those who consider themselves quite tech-savvy. Last week, iPhone users received a number of fake login requests that look identical to legitimate ones.

Once entered, the details are collected and will give hackers access to accounts and features that require your Apple ID login.

“Even users who know a lot about technology have a hard time detecting that those alerts are phishing attacks,” said iOS code expert, Felix Krause in a blog post.

If you think you’ve received the dodgy YouTube link, respond to your friend asking them what it is specifically. If it’s legit, they’ll be able to tell you, but most likely, they’ll tell you they didn’t send it at all. If the message is from one of those friends you hardly speak to, that could be another indicator.

At the end of the day, if you get sent a link, think twice about clicking it. If you wanna be super careful, you can ask them how you can find the video on YouTube so you can search for it yourself and avoid the link altogether.


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