Facebook not gonna charge for access... Now stop listening to scammers!

With the proliferation of groups, pages and profiles on Facebook currently claiming all sorts of skinner and skandaal about Facebook threatening to start charging for access to the world’s most popular social network, I figured it was time to set the record straight.

Enter Spywared.com with a couple of already-prepared articles on this exact subject:

Scam Facebook Pages are kinda dodgy…

Facebook has millions of users world wide and this makes the website attractive to scammers. Several “Monthly charge” frauds are circulating for a few months now pushing gullible users into panic. People are usually invited to join a group to express a protest against upcoming monthly fee. The rumor about charging $4.99 or £3.99 or £14.99 a month is totally made up. However, confusion is not what the scammers seek: members of the group are directed to external websites that are capable of installing malware. Some of the sources can even download 25 different infections automatically upon visit.

The incidents made Facebook delete “WE’RE AGAINST THE $4.99 A MONTH CHARGE FOR FACEBOOK FROM JUNE 30TH 2010” group but a new one appeared shortly after that. The new group is called “I WILL NOT PAY £3.99 A MONTH TO USE FACE BOOK FROM JULY 9TH 2010” and it’s the same fraud as the previous. These two groups are not the only ones trying to confuse people; the monthly charge or the formulation of the name might be different but the purpose is the same: installing malware onto computers.

Facebook representatives have repeatedly declared that the network is not going to charge a basic fee for the main services.

Original Spywared article here.

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In addition to the groups and pages about being charged for access, a new scourge has cropped up – fake profiles (with token cutie pic of course) with links to not-quite-honest sites. Take a look:

Fake Facebook Profiles are kinda dodgy…

If you have been recently invited by Emily Bennet, Emily Wood or Katherine Griffin to become friends on Facebook, you should be careful as these girls mean big trouble. Especially if they look like the girl in the picture.

Antivirus provider AVG Technologies reported that the users of the LinkScanner service have detected numerous fake Facebook accounts all including the same picture and a link to the “members” home video which actually leads to a corrupt website. Once the website is visited it displays a warning about the computer being infected and imitates performing a security scan and finding various security threats. It then suggests purchasing and downloading a security application that would take care of the problem. Unfortunately, all this is a huge scam made to sabotage the world’s largest online community. Lucky for us, Facebook are no amateurs in dealing with such problems. They have already started removing these accounts and solving the problems that might have caused this fraud.

However, you should still be aware and not share your contact details with suspicious Facebook users and not follow every link that you are given or find on some member’s profile. And you should definitely avoid the girl in the picture – she may look cute, but she just might cause you some serious trouble.

Original Spywared article here.

So stop panicking everytime you hear a rumour, and stop joining militaristic groups demanding that “I will not pay to use Facebook!”

By the way: protesting reveals that you may in fact have hippie tendencies, but I ‘m getting sidetracked here… “Hell no, we won’t go! Hell no, we won’t go!”

Hippie. In the words of the great Eric Cartman: “Hippies, hippies… they want to save the world but all they do is smoke pot and play frisbee!”

But anyway, back to the point of this article: Facebook is free. End of story.

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Both articles sourced from:

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Stu’s take on… fan page on Facebook: click here. Yes, it’s free