We couldn’t help but notice a sharp drop in the number of viral scams active on Facebook the past few weeks. While this is great news for all of us Facebook users, its important to know the reason behind the decrease in scam activity before we break out the champagne. To get our hands on some solid data that will corroborate or contradict our August scam theory, we dropped BitDefender Safego a line requesting for some statistics about the propagation of Facebook scams last month.

The average number of scams detected during the latter half of August fell sharply, according to Bitdefender Safego statistics.

Summer seems to slow things down in scam land pretty seriously, as the August 20 – 29 fake app crop dropped by almost half from the previous two weeks, on average. Nevertheless, two peaks, Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, help keep us all on our toes (the scam beast may just be sleeping off a serious case of sunstroke).

* Total number of Bitdefender Safego users: 99,680

It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on this kind of statistics. The change we’ve noticed may be due to the simple fact that it’s summer. Only time will tell if this apparent slowdown in scammers’ business is here to stay.

The recent privacy setting adjustments Facebook has implemented may also have an impact on these numbers. We’ve already drawn Safego users’ attention to the fact that by simply activating the Tag review option in their account they will have better control over what content they’re tagged in and, consequently, fend off tagjacking attempts. This can turn out to be one of the best gifts online socialites can give their friends as tagjacking schemes enable scammers to cast their fishing nets well out into the online social ocean.

However, let’s not forget the common sense rule: if it’s too good/scary/scandalous to be true, just avoid clicking it! In the words of the great Freddie, the happy trend we’ve just spotted is screaming: “Don’t stop me now/ I’m having such a good time!”. So let’s just keep it going.

Click wisely and safely!

We would like to thank Ioana Daniela JELEA, Bitdefender Communication Specialist for contributing to this post!