Facebook team up with the Washington’s attorney general have filed separate suits against Adscent Media, an ad network accused of encouraging the spread of spam via tactics like clickjacking.
In most Facebook scams, users are offered links to provocative content, and through a series of cleverly designed steps, tricked them into liking pages, and/or unwittingly surrendering personal information, subscribing to expensive services, and spreading links to their friends.
Likejacking is a form of clickjacking, which takes advantage of a browser vulnerability that permits malicious actors to make the ‘Like’ button invisible. Once the ‘Like button is made invisible, scammers can overlay pictures and other content, and trick users to click on the invisible ‘Like’ button.
In some cases, a process called “clickjacking,” codes are hidden in enticing-looking links, that activates Facebook’s ‘Like’ function.
Facebook said a browser vulnerability that allowed the exploit has been fixed so users shouldn’t continue to see the scam.
Adscend Media LLC, a self-described “performance-based marketing network”, is believed to have generated $20 million a year from the actions.
“We don’t ‘like’ schemes that illegally trick Facebook users into giving up personal information or paying for unwanted subscription services through spam,” Attorney General Rob McKenna said in a statement.
“Security is an arms race, and that’s why Facebook is committed to constantly improving our consumer safeguards while purshing and supporting civil and criminal consequences for bad actors,” said Facebook General Counsel Ted Ullyot.
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