Who is Nicole Santos, and why is she taking over your Facebook account?
That's the question frustrated Facebook users are asking themselves Thursday, as their accounts are quickly becoming inundated with a horribly offensive, accusatory message.
"F*** you f*****. Go kill yourself. Vote for Nicole Santos. I hate you and the only way to remove all these posts is by disabling this below," the spam post reads, according to The Next Web.
Understandably, if you received this threatening message you'd want to wipe it from your Facebook profile. And thankfully, that offer is available: all you have to do is click on the "Verify My Account" link, and that will take care of the problem. Right?
Wrong. The scammers behind today's hoax are clever: they know that you'll want to quickly erase the vulgar message, so they've created a (fake) solution. The "Verify My Account" link doesn’t stop the spam. Instead, it allows a malicious script to access your Facebook account, and enables the vicious worm to continue spreading.
Related: Facebook attacks scam spam with new security tools
Facebook sent The Next Web an email explaining that they were fixing the security error, and were "in the process of cleaning up any spam it may have caused."
Security experts warn Facebook users to be cautious when clicking on links, especially ones embedded in unsolicited messages, as they are often how scams like this propagate.
But what does all this mean for Nicole Santos, who is quickly becoming Facebook's most hated, nonexistent villain?
Well, her name is a trending topic on Twitter, and an "F*** Nicole Santos" Facebook page has just short of 23,000 likes.
But cheer up, Nicole, at least someone's got your back. Just hours after the scam started, an Etsy artist has created a "Vote For Nicole Santos" shirt.