New Facebook Virus Compromising Accounts, Credit Cards

A new string of virus has been targeting Facebook recently and not only can it jeopardize your account, it can also end up costing you money.

How it works is you end up receiving an e-mail notifying you that your Facebook password has been reset. An attachment accompanies the e-mail that tells you it contains new login credentials. Upon opening and clicking on the contents of the attachment, a malicious program is installed on your computer that logs keystrokes and steals your passwords to other websites, including your e-mail. McAfee Inc. warned its users earlier this week of the virus, as did Facebook in a status update.

Now back to how this can end up costing you many banking trips and loads of money. A friend of mine fell victim to this virus last week and had his Facebook account compromised. He also happens to have an advertising account with Facebook and therefore an active credit card is on file. He had several paused PPC campaigns for affiliate offers in his dashboard that were not active at the time. What the hackers ended up doing was activating every paused campaign in his account, which began to run immediately and rack up clicks. He only noticed this when Facebook froze his account due to malicious activity and sent him an invoice for his recent advertising activity. Unfortunately, he is now on the hook for over $500 in advertising fees he did not agree to, but at least he has his Facebook account back.

He’s currently dealing with Facebook to get the charges reversed, along with his credit card company.

This all began with clicking on a simple e-mail attachment and it snowballed from there, costing him time, money and the hassle of straightening out his social network profile.

Facebook never sends out attachments, and no matter how official the e-mail looks, it’s best to deal with only Facebook.com for password reset issues.

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