What I am about to talk about may or may not be a virus, but it's definitely a security problem that I've witnessed on more than one occasion with friends of mine on Facebook within Schuylkill County.
I've witnessed on 2 occasions of 2 of my friends (who do not know each other), who had their profiles duplicated. It is an identical profile, same cover photo, and same profile photo. Usually nothing else on the profile.
The first sign of this happening is, you receive a friend request from someone that is already on your friends list.
Once you become friends with this new account, they begin talking to you. Just as if it's really the person on the other end. They usually start out by saying that they had to recreate their account because of a trojan virus on their previous account. They will ask you how you are and even some information that may be on your profile. Eventually this other person will get to telling you some "Great News", and it's about how Facebook is giving out money to older people on Facebook.
Let me just add here, the person who's account was copied, has no idea this is even happening.
As the conversation continues, they'll eventually lead you to a link to a web site that has your name on it that you could receive money from Facebook. The page will ask you for all your information and credit card info. One of the instances did ask for $550 for personal reasons. Now at this point, the people I've heard this from have gone no further with this, and I've researched that YOU CANNOT GET MONEY FROM FACEBOOK. This is usually where the red flags go up.
This is obviously a scam that tries to fool you into thinking this other person has found something great. The scary part of all of this is, the person talking to you seems very real. They answer questions quickly and they even ask you about stuff that may be available on their profile.
So what do you do if you see this?
First thing to do is to go back to the original profile of the person and message them to make sure they know this is happening so they can tell all their friends.
Secondly, you can report this to Facebook by using the link below provided by Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/help/167722253287296/
When this account get's enough reports, Facebook will shut it down.
Now you may ask if you can't get in touch with the person immediately, how can you tell if this profile is fake, the easiest thing is to do is start asking questions about the other person that only they would know. You could ask about pets that they don't have or even ask this profile about a non-existent family member. Just something that you know what kind of response you should get.
Please use this report to share with your friends. Both people that I've known that this happened to, they've both been from Schuylkill County.
The more this is reported when it happens, the faster Facebook will find who is doing and it will be stopped.
Has anyone else seen this?