Its almost like familiar sounds of your friends and family, suddenly interrupting in your busy life, "We know what you did and its a facebook video now..... And you know the answer to it. Sex, Crime, or something weirder." If someone like your friends or family say this to you, your reaction to this will be like, "What the F...?".   Even if you've not done any of this, there is this fear about social loss/damage to your image.

It all started with a flood of FB notifications in my inbox from my friends. Mostly they read something like this: "Hey xyz (your name/surname), wtf, you have been tagged in this video! Go untag yourself!"

I think a number of readers of this blog might have got the same kind of notifications. As soon as you click on this notification after accessing Facebook, it does not open any video, but it surely opens up your account , transforming it into a botnet (Botnet means something like a zoombie computer, which becomes a part of cyber attack, without its owner's knowledge) attacking all your contacts. Congratulations, you are one of the spammers now.

What luckily has saved me are three things, One, stoic nature, Two, lack of so called adventures and Three, uncommon surname. Well, I was saved from this wave of cyber-attack because currently I'm engaged in something and have for a number of days been scouting libraries (reason 2). So the crime which I, at the maximum, feel getting caught for, is not properly shelving a book or two (unknowingly) (reason 1 and 2).  I've got an uncommon surname (many can't even spell it properly, so how on earth they use it), so when these notifications hit my inbox, that in a way gave away a part of the story (reason 3). 

But not everyone might have been so lucky (or unlucky?). As they say, nothing is a crime unless it is caught. Here, we have a fast-spreading spam that is sent by your friends and even family, saying that you are caught in the act in a facebook video (if you have done one, off late). Implying, that everyone of your friends on FB may watch it. Even if you have not done something, it reads you have been tagged, so even that is bad, isn't it? Being tagged in porn or even worse, some anti-national video and trust me, you have been reduced to a zero, in your social life. Generally, you don't feel like discussing this with friends or family. A good trigger to your fear mechanisms. Something which makes it irresistable, to act on it.

Whats more disturbing is that it takes atleast hours, if not days, to realise what exactly this spam is all about. Remember the 'Who's viewed your profile' spam. 

A few tips that may help in such situations:
  1) Try not to lose your calm, both, if you see something like this (else you'l keep fallin for it time & again) and even if you've fallen for it, "aur raita mat faillana"  (meaning - "don't make it a bigger mess, there are viruses on the internet claiming to be the best anti-virus, anti-spware, anti-spamware, etc.");
  2) If you are sucessful with tip 1, try identifying the crime by not doing what they say, but, by using common sense. In this video spam, it was easily observable as this spam was present only in the notifications, not your wall. Careful about this, there have been a few of them on your wall as well, like, "How will you look after 80 years?", "Watch this video!"  
  3) Try mitigating the damage in case you've clicked on something, your account has been transformed in a bot, it means now you (your account is spreading the spam to all your friends), change your passwords - both Facebook and any other, which you've been using the same password for.
  4) Once you've changed password, try informing your friends about it, that's the least you can do.
  5) Take a lesson, do not post any personal, sensitive information on social networking sites (MOST IMPORTANT)!!!

Wishing everybody a happy internet experience.
I WONDER WHEN WE WILL HAVE AN ANTI-SPAMMING LEGISLATION??