Facebook users warned of scam

A global computer security firm has warned Facebook users against installing and running the app. Photo / Thinkstock.

An international scam is cashing in on recent reports that people may soon be able to see who has visited their Facebook profile.

Warnings have been issued to users of the popular social networkingsite about the scam that aims todrive people to spam survey websites, which then earns money for the tricksters.

This month there was speculation that the days of secretly snooping through other people's pages would soon be over after a change to the groups function which allowed users to check who had seen a post.

However, there was no confirmation from Facebook that anonymous profile browsing was about to come to an end.

That has not stopped scammers from preying on people's concerns.

Once someone falls for the hoax, a message appears on their profile and in all their friends' newsfeeds which says: "WOW I cant believe that you can see who is viewing your Profile! I just saw My Top 10 Profile and Photo Peekers and I am SHOCKED!! You can also see WHO VIEWED YOUR PROFILE here -" with a link attached.

If the link is accessed, an application asks for permission to access:

Basic information, including name, age, photos, friends and location.

To post on the victim's behalf, including status updates and photos.

To access the person's data at any time, even when they are not using the application.

The scam then sends the person to a site where they have to complete a spam survey. The scammers get money for each person they send to survey sites.

A global computer security firm has warned Facebook users against installing and running the app.

"Clearly rogue applications like this could be used for scooping up personal information, or spreading spam and scams across the social network," it said in a blog post.

Facebook says it does not provide a functionality that enables someone to track who views their timeline or parts of their profile, such as photos.

Third party applications are also unable to do this.

There has been no confirmation from Facebook that it will change its privacy policy to allow people to see who has viewed their profile.