Watch Out, Rollercoaster Accident is a Facebook Scam!

You would think that such a huge social network like Facebook must have a stellar security system enabled and that you are very well protected. If you wouldn’t think so, you wouldn’t reveal so many details about yourself and you would definitely post fewer comments around. To know that Facebook doesn’t actually have such a strong security system would be a total image crash.

I am personally surprised by how many scams one can see on Facebook, these days, and how poorly the engineers from Facebook cope with them. If you recall, a “successful” Facebook scam was the one with free t-shirts. Now, another one seems to spread fear across Facebook users and pose real threats to the security of our accounts. Be aware of the Rollercoaster accident scam!

Rollercoaster Accident, a Dangerous Facebook Scam

If you see this scam on your friends’ profile, don’t hesitate and do contact the Facebook Security team. It’s better to prevent an accident and account breaching than only to be aware about it; help out others because, one day, it could be you the one in trouble and we could only imagine how clever these baits will get.

And it seems that this scam is a ghost from the past, as there are similar reports from the renowned Sophos security firm that date since April, last year. I fail to understand why this scam is still haunting the Facebook community, returning in a new version. Be aware of this rollercoaster accident scam, you can easily recognize it if you see sentences like these:

Rollercoaster Accident in California!
HORRIFIC Roller Coaster Accident! In Universal Studios..
OMG! Theme Park accident in Alton Towers United Kingdom
Rollercoaster Accident in United Kingdom
ACCIDENT! – 89% Can’t Watch It Rollercoaster Accident in Australia
Rollercoaster Accident in California

Facebook Scams Result in Loss of Personal Information and Malware Infection

In many situations, you will not suffer breach of your account, since that would be too difficult. But, what scammers do is this – they drive huge amount of traffic to certain pages or complete certain surveys. More experienced scammers will infect your computer with malware and/or steal your personal information. Always remember not to share your details with a third-party, only if you are 100% sure that it is a trustworthy one.

A third-party will ask for your details only if you want to subscribe to a certain website or you want to share your games’ achievements (which, by the ways, looks very spammy when you do it). Under no circumstances you should click on appealing links shared by your friends, as that could easily be a Facebook scam. The difficult part about them is that you trust your friends and you think they just want to share a funny/interesting thing they’ve found on the web. Don’t be deceived and be precautious, Facebook scams are really dangerous!

Last updated by Radu Tyrsina, on 17-Dec-16