Facebook users targeted with bogus Walmart gift card offer

Christmas season should be a happy and relaxed time, but it often isn’t – especially when the money is tight. There are feasts to be planned and presents to be bought, and it’s understandable why scammers choose this particular time to heavily target Internet users with bogus gift cards.

Facebook users are obvious targets because not only can they fall for such a scheme, but they can also easily be tricked into sharing it with their friends.

The latest of this scams starts with a message saying “Hey friends, I got a $1000 Gift Card from WALMART asa Christmas Gift! Get it right away! [LINK REMOVED]”.

According to Facecrooks, those who follow the link land on a page reiterating the gift card offer and enumerating the steps they have to go through in order to be eligible for the offer:

If they do it, they effectively provide their authentication tokens to the scammers. Also, once they log into Facebook, they are asked to install a bogus app called “My Local Walmart”.

The app’s access to their account is then used to push out to their friends the aforementioned message, which starts the whole malicious cycle once again.

Users who have fallen for the scheme are advised to delete the offending message from their newsfeed and remove the bogus app from their account.