Thousands Of Facebook Users Fall For ‘Free Audi R8’ Scam

Sports car fans are the latest to be targeted by online hackers, as a Facebook “like-farming” scam sucks them in with a supposed giveaway of Audi R8 sports cars.

Over 200,000 petrolheads have already fallen victim, with Bitdefender, the security firm which detected the scheme, saying thousands more are joining by the hour.

The scam attempts to get users to like and share videos of an Audi R8 racing against a Nissan GT-R, coupled with a fake competition promising to give away two Audi R8s to the winners.

Zoom Zoom

In order to win the “contest,” users must like the post and also name their desired colour and share the message on their timelines.

However, the sites hosting the videos are also running the JS:Trojan.JS.Likejack.A code that can be used for “clickjacking” on hidden commercials.

So far, the scam has seen almost 180,000 likes and over 210,000 shares. Bitdefender has reported the malicious web page to Facebook, and warns users to be wary of any competitions not hosted on companies’ official pages.

Bitdefender says that it has detected affected Facebook users from the UK, Germany, Denmark, the US, Australia, South Africa and Malaysia.

“Like-farming may not seem the worse things scammers can do on Facebook. However, it has repercussions for users and companies’ reputations and can even lead to identity theft,” states Catalin Cosoi, chief security strategist at Bitdefender.

“Like-farming Facebook pages use the high number of fans to launch other fraudulent activities such as malware and survey scams to a wide audience. The database of unwary users can also be sold on the black market and used for more targeted attacks.”

Hijacking popular brands to lure in unsuspecting users has become a common tactic for cybercriminals on Facebook, particularly as companies across the world try and improve their online presence to connect better with fans.

Earlier this year, the site announced partnerships with two of the world’s biggest anti-virus firms to add malware removal tools, free of charge, for users of the social network. The deals with Trend Micro and F-Secure will see the tools added to Facebook’s abuse detection and prevention systems, the same ones that block other malicious activity like bad links and sites from being clicked on.

Are you an expert on Facebook? Take our quiz!