OMG!!!! You won't believe what this seventy-two-year-old grandmother did!
December 6, 2012 3:45 PM Subscribe
Mom was clickjacked on Facebook. The fake "video" is embarrassing, NSFW, and clearly spam. But she can't see it on her timeline or in her news feed in order to remove it herself. How do we remove it so it doesn't show up in all her friends' newsfeeds?
Mom accidentally clicked a fake video "posted" by my brother-in-law, which of course just spread the joy further. Here's the real puzzler: it shows up in my newsfeed, but does not show up anywhere in hers or in her profile. The image is pretty NSFW, unfortunately. How do we remove it so it doesn't show up in all her friends' newsfeeds?
I'm reluctant to report it as offensive/spam, because I'm not sure what the consequences would be--I don't trust Facebook not to ban my mother or prevent her from posting videos or in any way punish her for something she did not do. And I can't seem to find anything that would explain how to deal with this specific problem--all advice says simply to delete the offending post, but if she can't see it, she can't delete it. It doesn't appear to be anywhere--in her "likes," or "recent likes". The weird thing is that the link she clicked on, posted by my brother-in-law, shows up in HIS "recent likes," but her link does not. His is also not NSFW.
Yes, we will change her password, secure her account, scan her computer for malware, enable secure browsing, etc. (I'm helping her over the phone.) Now I'm just trying to figure out how to get that image removed. What might be going on here? Has anyone experienced this particular problem before?
Mom accidentally clicked a fake video "posted" by my brother-in-law, which of course just spread the joy further. Here's the real puzzler: it shows up in my newsfeed, but does not show up anywhere in hers or in her profile. The image is pretty NSFW, unfortunately. How do we remove it so it doesn't show up in all her friends' newsfeeds?
I'm reluctant to report it as offensive/spam, because I'm not sure what the consequences would be--I don't trust Facebook not to ban my mother or prevent her from posting videos or in any way punish her for something she did not do. And I can't seem to find anything that would explain how to deal with this specific problem--all advice says simply to delete the offending post, but if she can't see it, she can't delete it. It doesn't appear to be anywhere--in her "likes," or "recent likes". The weird thing is that the link she clicked on, posted by my brother-in-law, shows up in HIS "recent likes," but her link does not. His is also not NSFW.
Yes, we will change her password, secure her account, scan her computer for malware, enable secure browsing, etc. (I'm helping her over the phone.) Now I'm just trying to figure out how to get that image removed. What might be going on here? Has anyone experienced this particular problem before?
Have you tried guiding her through checking her Facebook "activity log" and hiding the item from there? Here's Facebook's help page about the Activity Log feature. Even if she can't figure out how to delete it from the Activity Log, it's easy to set it to private ("Only Me") from there by clicking the little icons at the right edge of each log item.
posted by dreamyshade at 3:55 PM on December 6, 2012 [5 favorites]
posted by dreamyshade at 3:55 PM on December 6, 2012 [5 favorites]
I've seen this happen to two people on my own Friends list over the past day -- same video problem. Whatever is causing this seems to be fairly wide-ranging in its "damage".
This is almost certainly a case of clickjacking -- something that these users clicked on appeared to be a regular link (such as a news article), but was actually this video's Like link.
posted by ellF at 4:30 PM on December 6, 2012
This is almost certainly a case of clickjacking -- something that these users clicked on appeared to be a regular link (such as a news article), but was actually this video's Like link.
posted by ellF at 4:30 PM on December 6, 2012
You need to look in the list of Facebook Apps. Often the clickjacking installs a new app and that app posts to your timeline, which is why it doesn't show as a regular status update that you can delete. The link is https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:35 AM on December 7, 2012
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:35 AM on December 7, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Autumn at 3:52 PM on December 6, 2012