Facebook viewing app is another scam

Facebook is being urged to be more careful about theapplications it allows its members to use, as it toils to remove a raft of appsthat were found to be part of a moneymaking scam.

Facebook says the apps, which promise to reveal the truthabout which of your friends are viewing your Facebook profile, do not work andshould be avoided. The rogue app even offers bogus assurances on its reliability,when all it actually does is push the user to another app, each click earningrevenue for the scammer.

In astatement, Facebook said: "Don't believe any applications that claim theycan show you who's viewing your profile or photo. They can't." Facebookadded that it is "aggressively disabling" the apps.

Writing in Trend Micro's Countermeasures blog, securityexpert Rik Ferguson noted another wrinkle: at least one version of the rogueapp will create a photo montage of all the infected user’s friends, tag it sothat they all receive notifications and then post the photo.

“These changes in scam tactics are clearly designed toovercome the changes that Facebook made recently to application functionality,including removing the ability for applications to send notifications directly,”Ferguson wrote.

“I can see that Facebook are actively combating theseapplications as they are posted, even on a Sunday evening, which is commendablebut… I said it first back in February 2009, isn’t it time Facebook at least hada review of their application publishing policy? The idea was dismissed backthen, but now that these things are becoming a regular occurrence there must bea tremendous burden being placed on the incident response handlers at Facebookthat could be better channelled into an application vetting process.

“For now though, just don’t click the links, they willdisappear from your streams as Facebook remove the offending apps. There is noofficially sanctioned Facebook functionality that will allow you to view whohas been checking your profile.”