"This Girl will Never Forget to Turn Her Webcam off Again" and other Facebook spam

It seems that every day, I check my personal Facebook page and see at least one friend or family member posting a link to possible Internet porn. Just today, a distant relative old enough to be my mother posted a webcam voyeur video complete with a screenshot of female anatomy, and I don't mean an arm. Did these friends or family members suddenly get really uninhibited?

Nope, it's spam caused by questionable apps on Facebook. It looks like this (blurred for sensitive viewers):




Everybody loves Facebook apps. I play Scramble pretty frequently to pass the time and Farmville's user base is growing every day. But spammers, malware writers and any number of other Internet baddies can also write apps. Friends pass apps around indiscriminately, allowing these applications full access to their personal information and even granting posting rights, clicking that ALLOW button without a second thought in their quest to "send a hug," support a cause, or some other well-intentioned action.

Then the app uses the rights you have handed over to post porn spam to your profile as you. Your friends see you posting a link to provocative video called "This Girl will Never Forget to Turn Her Webcam off Again," "Girl's Father Walks in on Her," or something like that and believes it's actually you posting it. Their guard lowered, they click the link and get all matter of malware, viruses, etc.

Everybody needs to be more careful with apps. When a friend sends an application request, really think about it. Do you really NEED another "send a heart" or "hugs" application to clutter your feed? While you're at it, now's a good time to clean up your applications. To do so:

In the upper-right corner, click "Account," then click on "Privacy Settings"

Under "Apps and websites," click the "Edit Your settings" link.

Next to the "Apps you use" list, click "Edit Settings"

Find any apps that sound questionable, and ALL apps you really don't need, and click the X on the far right next to each app. This is the "Remove" button.

While you're removing apps, here's one to add: search for "Defensio Social Web Security" on Facebook. It's a Facebook app created by Websense, one of the big names in web security. It will prevent spam from going up on your wall, guard your profile from questionable apps, and more.

Thanks for reading, good luck deleting apps, and be safe!