Facebook users who have been pushing for a “dislike” button on the website might have become victims of a serious scam.
The scam, which tricks users into providing personal information for an application that doesn’t exist, even caught the attention of the state’s Attorney General Roy Cooper.
Cooper’s office sent out an alert e-mail last week warning all Facebook users to stay away from the “dislike” application advertised falsely as status updates by other users.
“Avoid clicking on suspicious links whether they appear in e-mails or on websites,” Cooper stated in the e-mail.
Facebook, a social networking website with more than 500 million users, offers an option of clicking a “like” button for posts or pictures.
Users have been asking the website’s developers for a “dislike” button for months. A group on the website was even created for the cause.
According to Cooper’s alert, many users who want to “dislike” posts and pictures gave their personal information in a survey that was not controlled by Facebook.
After filling out the survey, the scam posts a link to the users’ profile pages encouraging others to download the false application, the e-mail stated.
Victims of the scam are connected to a Firefox browser add-on that creates an unofficial version of the button. The add-on could have been accessed without filling out the survey.
