Even if we’re not tech geeks of any sort, all of us have some inkling on how our News Feed get the content it displays. The top three most likely reasons are a.) posts or likes by friends we interact with frequently, b.) paid advertisements, or c.) a page that interests us based on our previous browser history or Facebook likes as well as the number of Facebook likes the page itself has.
For this article, we’ll be taking a closer look on how the third option goes. Fundamentally, a page that has more chance of interesting users are displayed more often to them. For example, Texans will get advertising of pages with Texan content while Californians will not. Similarly, a person who likes sports will get recommendations of pages for sportswear like Nike more often than a person who does not like sports. Furthermore, a page with 500 followers is more easily ignored than one with 500,000 followers. With that process in mind, let’s take a look at the alarming deals done just to secure a good market strategy using Facebook.
Followers = more shares. That’s the basic tenet of Facebook marketing. To this end, PCWorld has recently published a report that details a Google Chrome extension that literally takes control of your Facebook account and forces it to like pages that you’ve never even heard about.
According to PCWorld, the virus works like this. When an infected Chrome browser accesses a Facebook page, the extension checks the browser cookies to see if an account is logged into Facebook. If so, it will then execute a JavaScript code that tells the extension what to do with the captured account. Through the malware, the compromised account may post content on the News Feed and Timeline, spam friends with ads and messages, as well as like Facebook pages, all without the owner’s knowledge.
Through this, crooks can garner an astonishing number of likes for Facebook pages that doesn’t even have content posted. Yet. It seems like pages with many Facebook likes fetch quite a price. As Bogdan Botezatu, a senior e-threat analyst at Bitdefender, said.
“On underground forums in Russia, a page with 100,000 likes sells for about $150,000 to $200,000. Once a byte bandit buys a page, he can rebrand it. They can make the page look as if it’s affiliated with a well-known brand. We saw one page being used to market fake Nike sportswear.”
With the prospect of losing your Facebook account to crooks as well as being a tool for the marketing of illegal goods, it is imperative that we all take steps to safeguard ourselves against malicious software such as this. Make sure to read our guides on how to prevent malware infection by checking out the related posts and links below.
Related Links
1. How To Bolster Your Online Security
2. Facebook Private Messages Under Phishing Barrage
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