Justin Bieber trying to flirt? Another Facebook rogue application

Filed Under: Social networks, Spam

My fellow blogger Chet Wisniewski wrote overnight about a rogue Facebook app that claims to show a video of a girlfriend and boyfriend being hit by a car as they are kissing, and now we're seeing widespread status updates from Facebook users claiming to be about Justin Bieber flirting.

Justin Bieber flirting messages on Facebook

The messages read:

OMG Justin Bieber trying to flirt, check it out

followed by a tiny.cc link, and are sent by an application called Bieberflirting.

If you're one of the millions of teenybopper fans of Justin Bieber (and somehow I doubt that if you're reading this blog..) then you may be tempted into clicking onto the link to find out more about your hearthrob's seduction techniques.

What happens, however, is that you are taken to a rogue Facebook application that asks permission to access your profile.

Justin Bieber going crazy!

Bieberflirting rogue Facebook application

If you find that your Facebook account has been compromised by the Bieberflirting application, clean-up any messages it may have posted to your status updates and remove the application's right to access your profile. After all, you've just given it access to grab your personal information and to post messages on your wall.

Remove the Bieberflirting rogue application

We've reported the rogue application to Facebook, and hopefully they will shut it down shortly.

Here's a quick YouTube video where I show you how to clean-up your Facebook account from such an attack:

(Enjoy this video? You can check out more on the SophosLabs YouTube channel and subscribe if you like)

Justin Bieber is no stranger to having his name abused by Facebook cybercriminals, of course. In the past we've seen claims that Bieber has been caught being naughty on his webcam, that his cellphone number has been released on the net, and pictures of him and Cheryl Cole being used as bait.

If you're on Facebook, and want to learn more about security threats on the social network and elsewhere on the internet, join the Sophos Facebook page.

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One Response to Justin Bieber trying to flirt? Another Facebook rogue application

  1. Asian kid says:

    36 friend requests... priceless

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About the author

Graham Cluley is senior technology consultant at Sophos. The readers of Computer Weekly voted him security blogger of the year in 2009 and 2010, and he pipped Stephen Fry to the title of "Twitter user of the year" too. Which was nice. He was also named "Best Security Blogger" by the readers of SC Magazine in 2011. You can email Graham, subscribe to his updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.