Facebook spam attack pushes diet 'miracle'

It's still early enough in the year to keep those New Year's resolutions and to be flooded by diet commercials in magazines, on TV — and on Facebook. One weight-loss promotion on the social networking site, however, has turned into a spam headache for users.

If you start seeing a lot of postings from your friends saying they've lost 10 pounds in one week thanks to an HCG diet, they're not dieting together in some cult-like fashion. They probably the victim of the spam attack. The goal of it is to get users to click on a Web link to the diet.

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FOR SUBSCRIBERSKratom-like substances are popping up in a typically benign supplement

FOR SUBSCRIBERSGOP super PAC increases its spending for Sen. Jon Husted in tough Ohio race

FOR SUBSCRIBERSRecords reveal tumultuous marriage between slain New York Times executive and wife

FOR SUBSCRIBERSFrom clean energy warrior to ‘wall of shame,’ James Talarico reverses on a fossil fuel money pledge

FOR SUBSCRIBERSCongressional staff planned official trip with luxury stops in Italy and France weeks before election

FOR SUBSCRIBERSA harrowing ordeal aboard an Israel-bound plane

FOR SUBSCRIBERSOpenAI CEO Sam Altman to skip congressional hearing on rogue AI agents

FOR SUBSCRIBERSKey DOJ lawyers departed Trump ‘grand conspiracy’ probe amid pressure to produce, source says

FOR SUBSCRIBERSTrump’s new AI chatbot often links to a site launched under Clinton 26 years ago

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FOR SUBSCRIBERSThis Paralympian has two goals: Win medals and give away $500,000 to her teammates

FOR SUBSCRIBERSCornell rape allegation spotlights stringent New York state laws that have long drawn criticism

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The messages typically look like this, advises Sophos Security:

If you're seeing those messages, you might want to directly email your Facebook friend that "the scammers have taken advantage of their account to spew out diet spam, and advise them to be a lot more careful in future," writes Graham Cluley on Sophos' Naked Security blog.

While the spam doesn't appear to be malicious, "affected users should also run an up-to-date anti-virus program on their computers and scan for a possible malware infection," he says. "If there is malware present, it may have also grabbed your online passwords — make sure that you haven't left a backdoor open to your website accounts and change your passwords."

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