Beware of Facebook virus

My wife, who is working on her master’s degree, tipped me off to a warning by her university’s IT department that a virus is making the rounds on Facebook. Since many real estate pros, as well as buyers and sellers, are using the social networking site, I thought I’d share if you haven’t already heard.

Cnet reports that the worm is limited in nature, but the attack may be used again.

After receiving a message in their Facebook in-box announcing, “You look funny in this new video” or something similar, recipients are then invited to click on a provided link. Once on the video site, a message says an update of Flash is needed before the video can be displayed. The viewer is prompted to open a file called flash_player.exe.

Messages such as this should be a warning to users. If infected a user could be directed to sites they were not expecting and the user’s computer could be open to other malicious software downloads.

Facebook has posted instructions on how to fix the problem.