Becoming The Muse

If you have a Facebook account and haven’t found yourself tagged in a very dodgy link alongside 99 others, then thank your lucky stars and in the words of Mad-Eye in a Defence Against Dark Arts Class: Constant Vigilance.

Facebook has always had some sort of viral tag post shenanigans which give you a link to some article with a clickbait title whereby clicking on the link would take you to a site and before you knew it your account was compromised and posting weird stuff on your timeline. Sorry I was hacked 👀

I used to shake my head at the people who should know better getting their accounts hacked simpled because “they loved things” and clicked on malicious links, wanting to see some more of that oh you wouldn’t believe what she did with this….

The new viral tag is not something to laugh off, it’s quite a malicious piece of code that is as diabolical as it is brilliant. I can imagine the one who created it rubbing their hands together like a villain as the whole world on Facebook gets tagged.

How you get hacked/tagged with the Facebook viral tag:

Similar to any of normal viral tags, if you click on it, tag you are it – The virus utilises protocol similar to how you authorise a third-party application to access your contacts and to post on your wall (except of course by simply clicking on the link it means you have agreed to have it post on your wall)

•If you see the link on someone’s timeline and click on it, tag you are it.
•If you receive a notification that you have been tagged and you click on the link, tag you are it.
•And the one you might not have been aware of (especially those who use the Facebook App on their mobile phones with enabled notifications) When you get the Facebook notification that you have been tagged and you click on the notification TAG YOU ARE IT – it doesn’t matter that you didn’t actually click on the link itself, simply clicking on the notification alert on your mobile device will compromise your account.

When you get hacked and have set up unauthorised log-in alerts, you might receive an email or notification of a suspicious log-in detected on your account.

NOTE: for this viral tag simply changing the password will not stop it from posting if it has already gotten under the hood of your account – and it seems to post in the dead of the night so you might not even notice it till hours later.

The viral tag will then tag ALL of your friends list in multiples of about 90+. So if you have 1000 friends you going to find it has posted 10 times on your timeline with 90+ people per tag.

Securing your Facebook Account after a hack

*if you have signed up for unauthorised log-in alerts following the security prompt will walk you through the process of changing your password and securing your account.

Go to the Facebook Security and Login Settings

–Reset your password and review devices that are logged in to your account and remove those that are not you… if you are unsure you can remove all of them.

*Don’t forget to delete all the tagged posts that are on your timeline as keeping them there means others are likely to click on them and the cycle continues.

•Check out and activate the other security options such as:
Two-factor authentication
Alerts about unrecognised logins

You may also want to review your profile and tagging options
-When you are tagged, the posts first need to be reviewed before they appear on your timeline

If you see a suspicious tag or link don’t click on it. Good luck

Have you been hacked or encountered this tagon Facebook?

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Week 4 Storiesof our world WinterABC