By K.A. Laity
There was a flurry of questionable activity all over Facebook in recent days. Let me rephrase that: there was an added flurry of questionable activity over on Facebook.
It may have been related to Anonymous' claims to "takedown" the social media giant, but what happened was in large part due to Facebook's own rushed and slipshod programming of new and 'better' functionalities (I would write 'functions' but this requires a massively overblown noun).
The malicious folks who started this spammy bit of mischief (who may or may not have been members of Anonymous -- that's the trouble with a large, amorphous and pseudonymous group: you can't prove you're a member) exploited a vulnerability in Facebook's picture share function.
So they were able to make it look like you had commented on an image that was either pornographic, vividly and bloodily grisly or portraying animal abuse.
The spammers were able to exploit a (gaping) hole in Facebook's security net, but they had to have your help. Yes, you had to have clicked on a link and shared it, you were fooled into "pasting and executing malicious javascript" that made everyone think you were a perv/sicko/puppy-strangler. And most of the time, you didn't even know you had done it. That's the problem.
It's 2011 already; don't you know not to click on baits like "I can't believe you were naked in this picture!" or "Win a free iPad!" or "Look 20 years younger!"
Because honestly, you ought to know better. There's only one thing worse than people falling for these pathetic scams and that's people who panic and forward warning messages that don't actually have anything to do with these problems, distort them horrifically, or simply misinform wildly.You're not helping! It's simple. Do not forward any "warning" you have not checked. If you do not understand what the words mean in the "warning" do not send it to others.
The Facebook thing spawned far more panicky "warning" messages than it did porn links. "You've been hacked!" screams one of them, deliriously demanding that everyone go change their passwords at once. It's not a virus either, although people were spreading the "warning" as fast as one. There's Snopes, there's Hoax-Slayer -- there's any number of people in the world you could ask before forwarding on that nonsense!
Do I really have to explain Nigerian lottery emails to you? Is this what it's come to? This isn't the 90s. The internet is not new. I don't expect folks to be able to tinker with code, but I do expect you to know the difference between a hack, a virus and Facebook tagging. Maybe it's a prejudice of mine. Maybe people are happy thinking everything on the internet is the same thing.
I have attempted to help people who cannot tell what browser they're using to view the internets. To be fair, the interconnectivity of different social media -- sharing -- has made so much link together more transparently, so I may be fighting a losing battle. But when I hear people refer to "loops" and find out they might mean Yahoo groups or they might actually mean a blog and they cannot tell the difference it makes me so furious I have to go out and strangle puppies.
Image via Freezelight's Flickr