"I saw two this evening," one Facebook user wrote us Monday night, in an email that contained two screenshots from her Newsfeed. "The porn, to each their own ... but the dog and the blood just turned my stomach ... disgusting."
She's not alone. In the past two days, Facebook users have become increasingly vocal about graphic photos — pornography and mutilated corpses of humans and animals — showing up on Facebook Newsfeeds. Facebook users forwarded several screen shots to Technolog, which we forwarded to the social network, but won't publish at this time.
Facebook did not specifically address the images but they did provide this official statement:
Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam and malicious content is a top priority for us and we are always working to improve our systems to isolate and remove material that violates our terms. We have recently experienced an increase in reports and we are investigating and addressing the issue.
Facebook users are encouraged to report abusive content via the dropdown menu that appears next to each post on profile walls and Newsfeed.
It's not clear how widespread the gore and porn posts are throughout the site. In our anecdotal survey, Technolog heard more from users who said they'd only been told about the images from friends who saw such posts, along with the few who who sent us screenshots.
It's also unclear whether the graphic images are being spread via a clickjacking scam. Clickjacking scams are unfortunately common on Facebook and spread when a Facebook user clicks on a malicious link on the social network. The click allows code to access the user's account, which then spams malicious links to that user's Facebook friends.
Notably, this current Facebook scourge seems different from the CAP-LOCK warnings about "hidden" sex videos Facebook users are posting themselves as their Facebook statuses, which we reported as a hoax yesterday.
In that case, the screaming warnings claimed hackers would use a victim's name to post porn videos to the Facebook walls of the victim's Facebook friends. What's more, the warning alleges that these posts remain invisible to the victim. Several security agencies including Sophos say that they've found no evidence that hackers can are able to prevent you from seeing content they've posted using your name. This particular hoax first surfaced in September and it's possible the resurgence may've been caused by panic over this current alleged rash of nasty spam.
We will continue to update should this story continue to unfold.
More on the annoying way we live now:
- It's a hoax! 'Hidden' sex videos on Facebook
- Fidel Castro's niece trolled in Twitter debut
- Pug smarter than tech blogger, spots spoof
Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet. Tell her to get a real job on Twitter and/or Facebook. Also, Google+.