Have you been 'Disliked' on Facebook yet?

A new scam that spreads false status updates appeared recently on Facebook. Members were warned of a rogue “dislike” feature luring users into giving away personal information to scammers. The social networking website said it was investigating examples of the scam which tricks members into giving away permission to access their profile pages. The scam was launched amid calls for the introduction of an official dislike feature to accompany the “like” button already in place, according to IT security firm Sophos.>

Facebook users have for a long time been able to use use a special “like” button to show appreciation for friends’ status updates and messages.


Graham Cluley, of Sophos, said: “Facebook users should think carefully before they click on an unknown link in a friend’s status update as these scams are becoming increasingly common. Giving away personal information in a survey and allowing an application access to your profile is extremely risky and Facebook users need to wise up to this rather than just clicking on links that they see, just because they appear to be from a trusted source.”

The Dislike button button is spread through status updates which appears to come from friends on the social service with the following message:

If the user selects to install the button, the application will infect the user’s Facebook account and pass on a message like the one above or the one below to people on the users friends list.

However, according to Sophos, the application will  not do any harm other than to try to spread the messages. If you have been affected by the application, you can easily remove it in the account settings in Facebook.

“As always, we encourage people not to click on suspicious links anywhere on the web, even if they’ve been sent or posted by friends. We also have a robust reporting system in place and encourage our users to report any content they suspect to be spam or have the potential to compromise a user’s account through the ‘flag’ button underneath each post," said Cluley.

PROSPERO NOTE: Here's another reason why we don't have anything much to do with Facebook or Tweeter or any other so-called social network (except the Google one, which is comparably harmless if less popular). We don't ask you to like us or dislike us, but we do ask you to consider: when was the last time you made a onation to this site?