Facebook spam continues to grow

Facebook users are increasingly falling victim to spam messages, with a recent spam campaign achieving a conversion rate of 47%, according to security information from F-Secure.

Security advisor Sean Sullivan wrote on the company’s blog that the company’s research found nearly half of users fell victim to spam messages.

“With all the attention on ‘virally spreading’ links, we wondered, just how effective is it? What’s the conversion rate? Links spread virally – but so what? That’s only one step in the process. How many people actually fill out the CPA surveys that make the money?” he said.

Sullivan wrote the spam campaign, which attempted to involve the McDonald’s brand, netted about 32,000 clicks.

“40% is an excellent conversion rate, much better than email spam,” he said. “However, the 32,000 clicks is far less than similar spam from just two months ago when we saw several examples of viral links that yielded hundreds of thousands of clicks.”

“Social networking spammers don’t need to dupe very many people in order to be rewarded for their efforts.”