Warning: Facebook ‘Like Button Worm’ Clickjacks Your Friends

Over the past 10 days, Facebook users have been plagued by a variety of clickjacking viruses, now known as the Like Button Worm. Those affected quickly realize they’ve been duped, but by then, the chain reaction has already started.

The virus spreads simply by 1 person clicking a “Like” button on any of the affected pages. Since we all see updates in our status feeds about people, places and things our friends ‘like’, curiosity gets the better of many, and they too click to check it out.

Here is a short list of groups/videos/pages as a sample of what is enticing people to click:

“LOL This girl gets OWNED after a POLICE OFFICER reads her STATUS MESSAGE.”

“This man takes a picture of himself EVERYDAY for 8 YEARS!!”

“The Prom Dress That Got This Girl Suspended From School.”

“This Girl Has An Interesting Way Of Eating A Banana, Check It Out!”

Once you click on any of the above links, you arrive on a blank page that instructs you to “Click To Continue”. According to sophos.com, that page is infected by a virus called Troj/Iframe-ET. As soon as you click it, it automatically posts a silly spammy message to your wall, enticing your friends to view the video/link/group too.

How To Stop The Spread:

If you’ve been clickjacked, view your Facebook profile page and delete any status messages there that you yourself did not post. Don’t forget to delete the one that says you like the link. This will remove the update from not only your profile page, but the news feeds of all your friends.

How To Avoid Clickjacking:

Be vigilant about what you click. If you are brought to a blank page with just 1 link on it, that alone should be suspect.

Noticeably, the one line updates that used to appear on our profile pages when we clicked the like button of a friends post, are no longer there. If this was a decision made by Facebook to help combat the virus is unknown at this time.