15% of Facebook videos are likejacking attacks

Facebook scams have always been a problem on the social network, and just like email spam, no matter what improvements the company makes, scammers and spammers always find a new way to cause problems. Now, we can finally gauge how big of an issue this really is: security company Symantec recently set out to analyze likejacking attacks on Facebook.

Using a sample of 3.5 million posts with videos on August 2, Symantec found that up to 15 percent of unique posts were identified as likejacking attacks. Of course this number is skewed because most posts on Facebook aren’t videos, but it still gives a general idea of what Palo Alto needs to do in order to compete with YouTube.

For those who don’t know, likejacking is a play on the term clickjacking, which means asking a victim to click something while a different action is taken behind the scenes. Likejacking specifically refers to a victim clicking on something only to have some piece of content Liked, without their knowledge, in the background. This typically occurs with a fake video player window overlayed with a hidden iframe; actually clicking on it anywhere submits a Like, promoting the scam in question to your Facebook friends.