If you are a Facebook
user, this information might be of interest to you. A new virus is hitting
users, 800,000 of them, by stealing their passwords. According to Italian
security investigators, the malware hijacks Facebook accounts and also user’s
browsers. The researchers found that the virus appears as a link in your email
or Facebook message saying that someone has tagged you in a post.
You are then
directed to a different site, which asks you to open a new browser extension or
plug in in order to watch the video. Bam, you’re infected. Once the attackers
get into your browser, they can access everything you have stored in it
including accounts with saved passwords. If you store your passwords to you
different social networking sites in your browser, then you can be at an even
higher risk of being attacked. At the moment, researchers find that this new
Facebook virus is affecting Google Chrome and Firefox users at a rate of 40,000
attacks per hour, with a total of 800,000 so far. Google is aware of the virus
and has disabled the extension that allows it to attack browsers. Facebook is
also working on intercepting the links. Facebook is blocking people from
clicking on the link containing the virus, but it’s a good idea to use caution
even if you receive a link from someone in your contact list as they can be the
ones infected. As a precaution, you should not open links that instruct you to
install a new plug-in in order to watch videos on Facebook at the moment. It is
estimated that about 70 percent of people use Google Chrome as their browser.
So far Internet Explorer and Safari seem to be unaffected by this latest virus.
There is no sure way to avoid the new Facebook virus, if you use Chrome or
Safari; just use common sense and pass the word around.
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