A viral Facebook posting claims a girl committed suicide “live on cam” after her dad spotted her doing something is an old scam that has different variations.
One is titled “Girl Killed Herself live On Cam Just after Dad Seen Her While Doing This,” but others are titled “Girl killed herself after her dad posted this to her wall” and “Please click the like button to view the horrific post that made this poor girl commit suicide on Christmas Eve!”
None of these are real and while they promise a video, there aren’t any.
The posts ask the user to share it before going any further, which ensures that the scam spreads. They then take you to a page that looks like Facebook to do one of a few things: get users to take bogus surveys that collect personal data, get web traffic to a Facebook page that can later be sold to other scammers, or get users to download a rogue app. Some of these pages contain malicious software.
It is not recommended to share such posts, give personal information to surveys, or give a rogue app permission to one’s Facebook account.
“If you believe you may have been hit by this attack, view the recent activity on your news feed and delete entries related to the above links,” reads a post from Sophos.
To remove a rogue Facebook application, log into your Facebook account, go to your account application settings page, and find the list of all the applications that you have given access to your account
Go down and click on the “X” to the right of the rogue app. Some of the rogue apps attempt to trick users by using a legitimate-sounding name like “CNN,” “Fox News,” or “YouTube.”
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