Happy Friday! Upon returning to the homestead I've found an interesting bit of data for my research paper and I just wanted to make a note of it here.
Apparently Facebook's "suggest" script is spooking a lot of non-technical users, and as a result a chain status is circulating on Facebook. More information here. This is a "fear of the unknown" sort of thing - I also want to quote the chain status as it was appearing on Wed 2/3/10:
All FB friends. This is important. Do this asap! Go to settings. Click on privacy settings. Click on block users. in the name box enter 'automation labs'. A list of approx 20 people you dont even know will come up. Block each one individually. These people have access to your facebook account/profile and spy on what You do!
Sophos webpage's quoting of FB users on the hoax, as linked above.
There's a huge string of comments on the article on Facebook Security's organization page. Apparently the viral post was either originally in French or has been translated into French (an example of the status in French was provided in the comments - it was very close to the above.) It appears that Facebook's own system for limiting the spread of such misinformation is causing a great deal of suspicion. "They're blocking it the spread of this status, it must be true!" seems to be a common narrative, as is a bit of head scratching about about the link to the debunking article (liked above) being reported as "abusive." As a result, it is impossible to jump to it directly from Facebook.
According to Snopes.com, this chain has also been spread in a slightly different format (a particular name is associated with Automation Labs and is put forward as the "hacker's" identity) via email. It is interesting to note this misinformation is being spread by traditional channels (email forward) as well as newer social media channels. Twitter, however, seems largely immune to the misinformation as of this date - all message I've found in a search for "Automation Labs" are messages reporting it as a hoax - with one exception: a retweet, which I've screenshotted so I can track it backwards to the original senders.
The actual company, Automation Labs, which produces a software bot for Farmville also references the hoax. While I don't believe they are up to anything dodgey on Facebook, I'm not going to link to them here directly - I'll store the link in my notes though.
I think the fact that Facebook has changed their "look & feel" in the past several days has contributed to the sense of unease that their users feel. Several posts in the comment thread reference it and even try to tie it into the "hack."
I'm very tired, so I'll finish chasing this one down tomorrow. I suspect that this hoax will be very short lived, possibly playing itself out by Friday of next week at worst. We'll see if my guess is correct.
