Notice anything out of the ordinary on Facebook this week? If your account and/or News Feed seems to have been infiltrated by an onslaught of violent and even pornographic images, you’re not alone.
Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told FoxNews.com, “We have recently experienced an increase in reports and we are investigating and addressing the issue. We are always working to improve our systems to isolate and remove material that violates our terms. Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam and malicious content is a top priority for us.”
The outbreak is believed to have been triggered by users inadvertently clicking on infected links, videos and images, which then opened the spam virus even further and allowed the spam to do it’s ‘dirty’ work Facebook-wide.
Outraged, Facebook users have been jumping on Twitter to vent their frustrations, with some threatening to close down their accounts entirely. While Facebook announced Wednesday that the spammers had been caught and they are taking steps to prevent future hacks and privacy violations, we recommend password changes, removing unnecessary or unwanted Facebook apps and being particularly vigilant about links that you open within the next few days.
Time will tell what kind of damage this latest outbreak of malicious spam will have on Facebook. Plenty of users were justifiably shocked to see such offensive images appearing on the world’s most-used social network, particularly due to the fact that 7.5 million users are under the age of 13. For some, it could be the breaking point to seek out other sites such as Google+ in order to avoid spam attacks like this in the future.
Related Stories: