“But once the renegade program has this information, it hacks into users’ accounts and re-sends the link to all their friends, saying “Look at this!” and perpetuating the scam. The virus that was on the prowl Wednesday, FBAction.net, was very similar.
Although it’s difficult to know the motivation of the people behind the attack, Facebook is an appealing target for spammers because users store so much personal information on it. In addition to names and e-mail addresses, some people keep their birthdays, addresses and telephone numbers. Once hackers have that information they can sell it to others on a black market.’