Since posting about the Justin Bieber likejacking campaign, we have observed similar campaigns cropping up.
Apparently, This Guy Took A Picture Of His Face Every Day For 8 Years
Most recent and notable is a new campaign, which purports to showcase a time lapse video of a man that took a picture of his face everyday for 8 years. From the power of celebrity to outrageous and shocking headlines, scammers have managed to strike the right chord for luring in users. This particular version shows just how successful they are.
Similar to the Justin Bieber campaign, there seems to be multiple versions of this one floating around. In addition, the multiple versions all seem to reside on the “.info” top-level domain.
Look Familiar? Same Template for FouTube found in the Justin Bieber "Likejack" Campaign
The user is presented with the same template we’ve seen before of a Fake YouTube (FouTube) page. The end result is no different – the users’ mouse click is hijacked and they automatically “like” this page, which is then posted to their Facebook Wall and reaches the news feeds of their friends and family. Once again, there is a survey component to this, which helps put money into the pockets of the scammers.
However, what’s different this time around is that this version also tries to push the Free iPad/iPhone 4 scam.
Pushing the Free iPad scam onto Likejacking Victims
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a Free iPad/iPhone 4. While the site above claims to have over 800,000 likes, in actuality, less than 100 people have actually liked the scam page.
This was discovered late last night and our research indicated there were at least 9 versions of it floating around. As of this morning, 3 of those are no longer active (the .info sites remain up, the social graph components have been disabled). The remaining 6 versions continue to fool users into clicking through, racking up more likes than the Justin Bieber campaign.
6 Active Versions of this Likejacking Campaign Remain
The reason for so many different versions is simple – strength in numbers. Going from 9 active versions to 6 still allows the campaign to spread, as showcased above. Garnering over 220,000 “likes” for one page would have raised some red flags and may have been taken down quickly. Having multiple versions out there allows these pages to stay active longer, giving them more time to spread and to fool more users.
We continue to urge Facebook users to remain skeptical of posts such as these. Warn your friends and family about these scams, and if someone you know has fallen for one, tell them to remove the post from their Facebook Wall and warn their friends and family about it. Knowledge is power, and so long as users are unaware of these types of scam campaigns, the more difficult it will be to stop them from spreading.
