It’s always important to be careful what links you click on Facebook because you never know how they could be used to collect your data. A great example of that occurred this week when a team of cybersecurity researchers discovered a sophisticated overseas troll farm using Facebook links disguised as pornography to capture Facebook user credentials. According to the digital forensics experts at nonprofit Qurium Media, these cybercriminals then turned users’ accounts into malicious bots.

After researchers discovered that these hackers were able to skirt around Facebook’s detection systems, they notified the social media giant.

“We emailed Facebook and thought, ‘Of course they’re going to do something about it,’” Tord Lundström, the technical director at Qurium Media, told WIRED. “These are criminals that are building fake services within the same platform that is actually supposed to stop them. This would be equivalent to selling drugs in the police station.”

However, much to the researchers’ surprise, Facebook didn’t respond to Qurium Media even though they reached out three times. Thankfully, Facebook finally took action after WIRED contacted the company. These kinds of phishing attacks are far too common on social media, and users need to be more aware of what content they interact with. However, it’s also clear that Facebook needs to step up its content moderation efforts to catch these scams before they can ensnare users.

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