Online Threat Alerts (OTA) - Alerting you to scams and frauds.
Facebook Posts Asking You to Share to Help or Support Children, Adults or Animals

There are deceitful Facebook users who are posting pictures of sick, starving, dead and injured children, adults or animals on Facebook, to trick other Facebook users into sharing them in order to make them popular. This type of activity is a harvesting scam, and the photos or videos in them are being used without the owners' consent. The heartless and deceitful people who are tricking Facebook users into sharing are only taking advantage of caring Facebook users, who think they are helping out, by playing with their consciences. The scam may also ask Facebook users to compliment a child, an adult or an animal, or type "Amen" to be grateful for something.

Scammers use the posts to gather up potential victims. Once they have enough Facebook users, they will start sending them spam (unsolicited messages) with links that will take potential victims to phishing websites that will steal their information, or malicious links that will take them to dangerous websites that will infect their computers with Spyware or Trojan horse. The scammers may also send fraudulent messages claiming that their potential victims are so-called lottery winners and they need to send money in order to claim their prizes.

Also, if you have received a message stating Facebook will donate money to a child if you like, share or comment on some content, please do not follow the instructions in the message, instead, report it to Facebook. And, if you have already commented on Facebook posts with sick, starving and injured children, adults or animals that you are not able to determine the legitimacy of, please click here for instructions on how to remove those posts from your Facebook Wall and Timeline.

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