When Mark Zuckerberg recently hinted at the possibility of a “Dislike” button on Facebook, you could practically guess what would follow next: a wave of scams on the site purporting to offer the “real” dislike button. Of course, that’s exactly what has transpired, with cybercriminals using the news to help spread malware across untold numbers of News Feeds.

These spammy links offer unsuspecting users the opportunity to try out the new feature, but when they click through they are often encouraged to like a page and share it with their friends. The scams can sometimes be even more aggressive, potentially taking control of your account and spamming the link to all of your friends. Some other kinds of malware try to trick you into taking a survey or downloading a malicious program. But no matter what shape the scam takes, they are all trying to achieve the same thing: ripping you off.

“Don’t be duped,” wrote digital security expert Graham Cluley. “If you’re a Facebook crack-addict then try to resist the urge of falling for the latest scam, and wait for Facebook to properly roll-out new features as and when they choose.”

It’s a good rule of thumb to only trust links that come from reputable sources, and rest assured: if Facebook does ever roll out a dislike button, you will be made quite well aware of it by the site itself.

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