Rant #2

Okay, time for another rant. This time about all these recent Facebook scams going round, Oslo bombing, spider under the skin, death video of Amy Winehouse, who's viewed your Facebook/Twitter profile, etc

These scams are stupid, sick and twisted. People, it's time to start using your brains when browsing Facebook, don't be silly and be careful what you click, there's no reason to fall for these.

Something someone told me quite a while back but it's still true. "If it's too good to be true, then it probably is". Facebook quite clearly aren't gonna bother to even attempt to stop the people who write these scams so it's up to us to educate people about these scams, but day after day I see one of my friends fall for a scam and appears on me Facebook news feed, and it seems this message still isn't reaching the majority of people out there.

Next, do people ever bother to hover over a link before they click it to see where it goes? hell, even then it's often a shortened link so who knows where it goes right? Well no, there is a way to see where a shortened link goes. http://www.longurl.org - Put in a short URL, hit Expand and it will show you where it goes - this site works for most everyday URL's like bit.ly and goo.gl links, use it!

As for short URL services, another I often see trying to phish my Twitter is Tinyurl.com links, however longurl.org will NOT work for Tinyurl links, so to see where these links lead, go to http://www.tinyurl.com/preview.php and *enable* the preview, now when you click a Tinyurl link, it wont activate the redirect to whatever site, instead goes to Tinyurl to show you what the link does lead to.

Last, what can be done to prevent this? Do what I do. If you see a Facebook scam appear in your news feed, report it as spam. If that person happens to be on your friends list/in the chat, tell them about it and educate them, get them to remove it off their wall so others don't get caught with the same scam.

Also, help spread the word of an app I and several friends in the security community use - MyPageKeeper. The app is designed to detect scams/spam posted on your wall and uses an automated service to comment on it and warn others away from it.
http://apps.facebook.com/mypagekeeper/

Start being smart people, there's no reason for this, it's just sad that there is no cure for stupidity, don't be one of these people that falls for these scams daily.

Thanks for reading.
- Belahzur