Earlier today while playing around on Facebook I had a notification show up in my news feed that showed two of my friends joining a new group. This group was titled NO I WILL NOT PAY $3.98 A MONTH TO USE FACEBOOK AS OF JULY 10TH 2010! Surprised that I had not yet heard the news of Facebook charging I decided to jump over to Google and find out what was going on. What I found were many news articles and blog postings about these scams that were going on using Facebook groups. Apparently users are creating Facebook groups claiming that Facebook will be charging its users sometime in the near future and using those groups to infect large amounts of computers with malware.
The general idea is to come up with an idea that many unsuspecting users will get behind, like the idea of Facebook charging its users, and then letting the number of group members rack up. Once the number of members gets to an acceptable level for these groups, the founder will then send out messages to all the users that contain links to outside websites offering more information about the “issue”. Finally when the members go to visit the site, their computers get infected with malicious software programs designed to cause the user grief and to use thier computer as a conduit for sending spam.
Facebook has already stated that they have shut down some of these groups in the past for implementing these practices and will continue to do so in the future.
The best thing to do if you are already a member of this group would be to go remove your affiliation with this group as soon as possible. You can do this by logging in to Facebook and then going to the groups page. There you will find a link that says “Leave Group” under the group’s logo. By doing so you will no longer be a member of the group and will not see the malicious links when the group decides to send them out.
About Facebook Charging Users
As far as the topic of Facebook Charging its users in the future goes, it’s not likely to happen. Facebook has already stated that they have no intention of charging the users to use their service. What they are not telling you is that they make more money per month from you being a free user then they would if they charged you. Facebook makes its money from the ads, such as the one to the right, that get displayed in the interface while your browsing around their site. Since they have 400+ million users to display those ads too they have many marketing firms willing to purchase them. If Facebook was to charge its users to access the site, they would have less users to market the ads too and would lose more users & money then they would make from the access fees.
If you see any of your friends or family joining a group that mentions Facebook charging users, send them a link to this article and educate them. For that matter use the Facebook “Share” button at the top of the article now and preemptively educate all of your friends and family!
** Update 4-27-2010 ** - There has been a huge response to this article. At this point the article has been shared on Facebook over 500 times and continues to grow. This has shown me that more articles on web safety are definitely needed in the future. I have started a new Facebook page about web safety and will be posting more articles like this in the future. Become a fan today and get automatically notified via Facebook of the new articles when posted.
Post Tagged With: Facebook, Web Safety
Jane
Posted: April 26th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Um, the term “it’s” is a contraction of the two words “It Is”… in the case of a possessive pronoun, as in your headline and subsequent text, that would “ITS”…otherwise, kudos for sharing this valuable info.
Robert Rolfe
Posted: April 26th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Jane,
Thanks. I have fixed the error.
Rob.
Claire Wudowsky
Posted: April 26th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Thank you for this article. I just saw that two friends signed up for one of those groups – and I too was surprised I had not heard the news. I did a Google search – and mainly found postings from that FP group – and then found your post (above) – I have shared it with my FB friends – hopefully, they’ll pass it along – thanks again!
Ray
Posted: April 26th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
The group mentioned is full of people who are too stupid to research an issue for themselves.
Here’s the response group to this. (Partly sarcastic, partly social commentary on the idiocy of many Facebook users).
YES I WILL PAY $3.98 A MONTH TO USE FACEBOOK AS OF JULY 10TH 2010!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=117239288299887
Robert Rolfe
Posted: April 27th, 2010 at 6:01 am
I have just updated the post to show that I have started a new Facebook page on web safety. This will be used to continue educating the unsuspecting users that seem to fall for these kinds of tricks.
The new page can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Web-Safety/114272368605503
Become a fan to get notified of new articles as they are released.
Chris DeCanio
Posted: April 27th, 2010 at 10:54 am
I don’t think its that people are too stupid to realize this Ray, its that
most of them are oblivious to things of that nature. Proclaiming that folks are generally too stupid is not necessary!!
Lauren
Posted: April 27th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
I think “oblivious” is a nice way of saying “stupid.” It takes more effort to join a Facebook group than to ignore it. The idea of a $3.98 fee is illogical whereas the possibility of a Facebook group being bogus is fairly commonplace.
And there are still a few more “it’s” that need to be changed to “its.” Great writing otherwise. =)
Robert Rolfe
Posted: April 27th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
I fixed more of the “it’s” problems. I am sorry about that. It’s one of the things I am working on.
Agencia Publicidad
Posted: May 2nd, 2010 at 12:58 pm
A great deal of this type of groups are made to send out affiliate offers like zip codes submits, etc. Each email submit gives you over $1.00, so its a smart idea. Sustainable business? NOP. But people make thousands doing this, so meh…
You have to believe everything you see on the web!