Your Happy Birthday Card Facebook Spam

OK. We’ve finally got to the bottom of this. Our Pete has been getting messages from his Facebook friends thanking him for sending them an online birthday card… when he hasn’t actually sent out a card.

Here’s a screenshot of a post on a friend’s wall, plus their reply:

The spamming “Your Happy Birthday! Card” greeting

This rather troublesome app seems to install itself without any obvious warning, then spam a link to friendsalbums.com to your friends when it’s their birth, with the message “Your Happy Birthday! Card” and “Happy Birthday”. Given that Facebook friends tend to trust links provided by their friends, they’d be forgiven for being trusting and clicking.

Looking closely at the link reveals it’s not a nice one. We use McAfee to protect us from dodgy spammy links, and get the following message: “McAfee TrustedSource flund potential security risks with this site. Use with extreme caution”

McAfee Says: Beware of Friends Albums.com

It’s all the fault of a pesky app that somehow got installed – probably as a Trojan on the back of something else that’s doing the rounds on Facebook at the moment.

Anyhoo – we’ve found out what it is, and more importantly, how to remove it…

How to remote Happy Birthday Greetings

• Open Facebook
• Go to the Privacy setting , using the arrow next to the “Home” (Top Right)
• Look for “Ads, Apps and Websites” and select “Edit Settings”
• Now, look at “Apps you use” and select “Edit Settings”
• Now, delete the Greetings app

Removing the dodgy Greetings App from your Facebook account

Job done.

Anyone else been affected by this pesky app? Or better still, know where it’s coming from and what Facebook’s doing to remove it? Please add a comment below