But for all their tech smarts, Beiber's fans are still young girls in love with a boy. That makes them prime targets for a new Facebook application scam that's spreading rapidly across the social networking site.
Like the application scams that were spreading last month, this scam works in much the same way. The unsuspecting Facebook user sees one of their friends posted a particularly hysterical status update:
"OH MY GOD!... Justin BEIBER Hits Girl For NO Reason! OMG! This Is So Bad!
There's a link to click to get more information. The link takes the curious user to what poses as a link to a story from Fox News. There's a picture of a young blonde woman and the text above it reads "Poor Girl Committed Suicide Because Of This!
After clicking the picture, the user is required to download the application (thus giving the scammers access to all their personal profile information) and then take a survey before being able to read the non-existent story.
Many adults might wonder how kids would get suckered into thinking any of this was real. After all, if a hugely popular popstar hit a girl, there would be multiple news stories to read about the incident and none of them would require downloading a Facebook application first.
But young kids may not put all the pieces together, especially if they're suffering from Beiber Fever.
"Put yourself into the mind of an eleven year old girl. By this time you're in a frenzy to know more, and won't think twice about clicking on and allowing a third party application access to your Facebook profile, said Graham Cluley, security expert for Sophos Security software.
Once the Facebook user has downloaded the rouge application and completed a survey, the damage is done. Not only does she find no story, she will also find herself signed up for spam emails, she'll find the application listed as one of her "Likes on her profile, and she'll find she's inadvertently advertised the application link in her own status update, potentially ensnaring her Facebook friends in the frustrating scam.
Not surprisingly, this scam changes its name every few days, in the hopes of tricking as many people as possible.
To grab the attention of kids who may not be Justin Beiber fans, the scammers use the same picture of the blonde girl but with the text, "This Girl Committed Suicide Because Of Dads Comment. The link takes the Facebook user to the same page as the Beiber scam, promising access to a non-existent Fox News story.
Why do scammers do this? Money. Every time someone fills out one of their surveys, the scammers get money. So of course, the goal is to get as many people as possible to fill out as many surveys as possible.
While these kinds of survey scams may not seem like a big deal to some kids, it's important they realize that letting rouge applications access their profile information is not something they want to get into the habit of doing -- especially since many young kids tend to "overshare on their profile pages.
