Facebook app phishing Facebook page owners

The Facebook app platform has often been seen by security experts as the chink in Facebook’s armour, since Facebook don’t perform any vetting on the Facebook apps that integrate with their social networking website.

Not only that, but anyone with the relevant technical know-how can develop a Facebook app.

This means that Facebook apps can be used to help scammers commit all sorts of crimes, including identity theft, malware attacks and phishing attacks.

And it is the latter that describes this Facebook app. If there was any lingering belief as to whether Facebook actually do any kind of effective vetting on their app platform, this blatant scam Facebook app should immediately quash it.

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The Facebook app (screenshot below) purports to help Facebook Page owners get their Facebook pages verified (by getting the blue tick to appear next to their Facebook page name) but instead is an obvious phishing attack that has the potential to trick many users of the social networking website into giving their Facebook login information to scammers.

The app asks for a user names email and password.

The app is designed to look like Facebook and asks users to enter their name, email and password. All the information that is needed for a scammer to login to a user’s Facebook account. In reality, if Facebook did have such a feature, they would not be asking for your login password.

The problem with Facebook apps is that they operate from the Facebook website and can lure users into thinking they are legitimate. But that is not the case. This app is not a particularly clever scam. In fact it’s essentially a pretty plain phishing scam, yet at the time of writing it remains an active Facebook app.

Do you think Facebook should start a more effective vetting process of Facebook apps? Let us know.