Your Facebook Profile Stalkers exposed? No, it's a rogue application spreading virally

Messages are spreading rapidly on Facebook claiming to reveal a way to find out who has been secretly viewing your profile.

Here are a couple of examples:

Brilliant!! Now u can see all your profile stalkers! --> [LINK]

and

WOW!! I can't believe that you can see whose viewing your profile. I've just seen my top 10 profile peekers and I'm shocked on whose Viewing my Profile. You can also see whose viewing your FACEBOOK PROFILE HERE: [LINK]

Clicking on the links takes you to a splash screen for a rogue application, and you are fooled by the promise of discovering who has been viewing your Facebook profile to give permission for a third-party application to access your account.

Want to see who views your Facebook profile?

This is amazing!

Now you can see who is viewing your profile and find out how many profile views you got. Just use our application and press button below and then Allow to analyze your Facebook profile!

Obviously you shouldn't grant permission on the following screen for the application to access your Facebook profile, but an alarming number of users appear to have no qualms about exposing their confidential information and degrading their security in this way.

The problem is that this isn't a legitimate application request. A rogue application wants access to your account so it can spread the messages and its link even further, spreading the campaign virally across the social network. The goal? To earn money by driving traffic to an online survey.

Notice that the survey presents itself in a convincing Facebook style, which may trick some users into believing that it is legitimate.

If you've been affected by this scam, you should clean up your account before any further damage is done.

I've made a YouTube video where I show you how to clean-up your Facebook account if you were hit by this, or similar scams on Facebook:

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

Make sure that you stay informed about the latest scams spreading fast across Facebook and other internet attacks. Join the Sophos Facebook page, where more than 100,000 people regularly share information on threats and discuss the latest security news.

You could also do a lot worse than check out our best practices for better privacy and security on Facebook guide.