Facebook phishing scam jolts caffeine lovers

There’s another phishing scam spreading viciously across Facebook world and this time it’s hitting caffeine lovers both north and south of the 49^th parallel. What appears to be an offer for free gift cards and vouchers from Tim Hortons and Starbucks is no more than a ploy to lead you down the garden path to get you to ultimately reveal personal information.

According to a release by Chester Wisniewski, Senior Security Advisor at Sophos Canada, the scam started with a bogus Timmies offer, then spread to Starbucks fans with a giveaway offer to celebrate Starbucks’ 40^th anniversary.

He further went on to say that it’s an elaborate attempt by con artists to get your email address, and lead you to another site which actually asks you to disclose extremely sensitive personal information.  The challenge he says, is that they share this information with all of their Facebook friends spreading the news of a great deal, but all it ends up doing is helping criminals propagate fraud.

I guess it’s not just coffee junkies that are getting hit. A quick look over on Sophos Security’s Facebook page shows yet another big name is also on the scam list. This time, it’s a bogus offer supposedly from Pizza Hut offering all-you-can-eat, for free!

Looking further, it appears that this scam leads you to a get rich quick offer.

But while the Pizza Hut phishing scam is somewhat benign, others can be more dangerous. Clicking on links has the potential of infecting your computer with unwanted viruses, spyware, malware, dangerous trojans and who knows what else.

So while we can’t live our lives in a vacuum, the best thing you can do is think before you click. Ask yourself if the offer is too good to be true and make sure that your computer is always protected.  Furthermore, making sure that whatever software you are using to protect against unwanted attacks is always kept up-to-date would also be a great idea.

While I’m typically an optimist, when I see these types of things happen, I sometimes think it’s a sad world we live in. These types of happenings are really scary and makes me want to think twice about “liking” anything.

Greg Gazin is the Real Canadian Gadget Guy.

Follow me on Twitter @gadgetgreg.

Tags: facebook, Gadget Guy, gadgetguy, phishing, scams, Sophos, virus