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Watch Out–Facebook “OMG” Scam Thrives

 "OMG!! Guys, you have to see this: This mother went to jail for taking this pic of her son!"

This proves to be the more recent version of “OMG!! McDonalds might soon shut down because of this, you have to see this!” Or, “OMG OMG OMG ...I can't believe this actually works ! Now you really can see who views your profile!!!” The Facebook “OMG have you seen this”  scam is alive and well in all of its various incarnations. 

This “OMG” (short for Oh, My God!) scam takes advantage of Facebook’s “like” feature to spread. When one of your Facebook friends clicks that button, it immediately posts a message for you to see. You think that if your friend likes it, then it must be okay. However, it’s possible that your friend was fooled into clicking a link to an unsafe site—one that ends up asking for (and stealing) your personal information. Sometimes these links promise a funny or exciting image or video, but you need to leave the Facebook site to see it. Chances are, even after going through all the steps, your friend never actually saw the promised image.

As a rule of thumb, we have found that the repeated use of “OMG” and a lot of exclamation points in a link nearly always indicates a scam. While the use of “OMG” is quite common, when you read “OMG, OMG, OMG you have to see this!!!” and you have to leave Facebook to see it, we recommend ignoring the post.

Another rule for safe surfing is to take note of the page’s address. For example, www.facebook.com is the correct address for Facebook. No one else can use it.  So scammers use something like www.facebooktricks.info, home of the “OMG OMG OMG,” scam, which is neither run nor maintained by Facebook. In fact, Facebooktricks.info, is registered to someone in Delhi, India. Facebook, on the other hand, operates out of Palo Alto, California.

Facebook recently announced a membership of 500 million. For perspective, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world. There is plenty of opportunity for fraud. Be careful when using Facebook, or any social network. Remember, you never know who the other person is. Accounts are hacked and fraudsters trick users all the time. Be shrewd when clicking any link.