If you’re one of the 800 million Facebook users worldwide, you’ve probably encountered the wave of graphic spam posts during the past week.
Among the spam were pornographic images that included PhotoShopped images of celebrities and photos depicting graphic and gory violence, causing millions of Facebook users to ask how the virus infiltrated the social networking site so quickly.
According to CNN, the spam was a result of a “hack that exploited security flaws in some Web browsers.”
The most common way that the viruses are spreading come in the form of links that make some sort of promise to the user – redirection to a new video or song, answers to a quiz or free plane tickets, for example.
According to USA Today, social networking sites are easy targets for spammers because “people are more likely to trust and share content that comes from people they know. This makes spam, scams and viruses easy to spread.”
Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesperson, said that the spam perpetrators have been caught and the company is currently “working with our legal team to ensure appropriate consequences follow.”
What is odd is that the spam “doesn’t seem to be generating any sort of benefit for the scammers other than generating outrage from Facebook users.”
However, the vivid pornographic and violent images have offended some users, even causing some to close their accounts.
Jenna Shaffer, a freshman at U. Southern Mississippi, shared her disgust about the recent wave of spam.
“I’m friends on Facebook with my little brother and my grandmother, and my account got hacked,” Shaffer said. “I didn’t realize, but I had been sharing those images with them. I am embarrassed beyond words and horrified that I was responsible for my little brother being exposed to such graphic content.”
Ian Goodnow, a USM sophomore, had a lighter take on the recent spam wave.
“It doesn’t really bother me,” Goodnow said. “I just laugh it off. It’s not something I would delete my account over.”
According to Facebook and security firm Symantec, less than 4% of the site’s content is spam. Compare that to email, where a whopping 89% of content is spam.
In a press release statement, Facebook described “educational checkpoints” they are going to set up around the site. These checkpoints will teach users how to identify spam.
In order to stay safe and virus free, Facebook users should abide by the following tips:
•Don’t click on links that look suspicious, especially if you are being asked to copy and paste a code into your browser.
•Don’t click on links sent in messages, even if they are from a friend. Double check with that friend to make sure they sent it before you open.
•Consider turning https browsing on in your Facebook settings.
• Change your password every so often.
Facebook isn’t the only social networking site to be hit with spam outbreaks; Google+ and Twitter have encountered the viruses as well.
Facebook has now gotten rid of the majority of the offensive images.
“Our team responded quickly and we have eliminated most of the spam caused by this attack,” Facebook said in its statement. “We are now working to improve our systems to better defend against similar attacks in the future.”