A drive that hardly anyone can suppress is curiosity. This is not only how clickbait pages work, which entice people with sensational preview images and headlines, but also this variant, which reaches users via Facebook Messenger: “Look who died”. This is what the messenger messages currently circulating look like.
Attack from Russia?
These links come from Facebook friends who have probably fallen for the same scam. Some of the links, which are different for each message, have the ending * .RU . This stands for Russia. Due to the current situation in Ukraine, some users now suspect that these could be malicious links from Russia. However, this cannot be confirmed!
What can happen
If you're curious, you click or tap on it anyway. After all, the link seems to come from a trustworthy person, right?
The scammers have different approaches, which is why the following can happen:
- You come to a page with a video, but you supposedly have to install a browser plugin to see it. However, this plugin intercepts the login data for Facebook and you can never see a video
- You are taken to a replica Facebook page where you have to enter your login details to see the video. Of course no video appears, but the scammers now have the login details
- You catch a Trojan.
In the current case, we cannot yet understand what awaits users in the end, because with many links that we have checked you end up on websites with a “loading bar” where you end up waiting a long time but nothing happens or has been done A link redirected you to a YouTube video, which no longer existed.
What to do if you are affected?
- Change your Facebook account password immediately
- Check whether the correct email address is stored in the Facebook account.
- Inform your friends list about the mishap.
- Scan your computer for malware.
- If necessary, remove all harmful browser extensions in the browser and check whether there are any other extensions/add-ons in the browser that you have not installed or that you are not aware of.
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )