Protect yourself against malware in Facebook Messenger

Watch out for malware doing the rounds in Facebook Messenger. It’s spreading through false messages claiming to come from a friend. It appears that this “friend” sends you a message with your name, followed by two emoticons of surprised faces and a link to YouTube.

What should I do?

If you receive one of these messages, don’t click on the link! It will take you to a fake YouTube page asking you for your connection identifiers and requiring you to install a plug-in to watch the video. This plug-in for the Chrome browser is malware that will spread further. What happens is the noxious plug-in gets installed in your browser so that the virus can spread further. 

So, delete the message immediately and notify the sender that fake messages are being sent out in his or her name. Also keep your antivirus software up to date and activate two-step verification to give your Facebook account double the protection.

Help... I clicked!

If you have clicked on the link, open your browser and check to see whether a plug-in that you don’t recognise has been installed recently. If it has, delete it immediately.

Also check on Facebook itself to see if an unknown plug-in has been installed: go to Settings > Applications and Websites to delete the unwanted plug-in.

Then change your password for Facebook immediately (via Settings > Security and Connection) as well as for any other accounts that use the same password. To protect your accounts better, you should use a different strong password for each of them.

Finally, make sure that you are not connected to any devices you don’t know about. If you spot any peripherals that you know recognise in Security and Connection, click on the three vertical dots and select Disconnect.