I got a request to accept a friend request from someone I don’t know very well. It appears to be from the Flipora app. This isn’t a virus but you don’t want to accept this request even if it is from your mother. Note that Flip, Flipora and Infoaxe are all the same company – but the initial request doesn’t mention any of these companies. We have had folks come in saying they thought it was a friend request from a service associated with Google , Yahoo, or AOL. It appears to list the name of the email service in the friend request so an email sent using Gmail will have a reference to Google on the friend request. If sent from a Yahoo email then it will reference Yahoo on the friend request, etc.
Do not confuse this with Google+. Google+ is a valid social networking site. It is similar to Facebook in many ways but Google’s user policies are a little more user friendly than Facebook’s policies – in my opinion.
Flipora is both a social networking site (like Facebook) but also tracks your web browsing habits (just like the NSA – (if you work for the NSA and are reading this – I am just kidding!) – but not a service that I want). It will suggest ads and other websites based on what sites you visit. You will notice that when you accept – you are giving them access to your contacts list. This means that as soon as you hit accept – an email will be sent to every person in your contact list asking them to accept your friend request and so it spreads.
To get rid of this – you need to uninstall both the program (do that first) and remove its extensions from each of the browsers that you use ie Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Note that personally I never accept friend requests or offers to buy something sent to my email. I don’t accept requests to play games on line either. If I have a real friend that thinks I would enjoy playing a game, I expect them to tell me that in the real world. Many games that are fun to play also access your contacts list and send requests for you to join your friend in playing the game.
I have not heard that they do any other inappropriate actions with your information. There are viruses and malware out there. Then there are things that are just annoying – this falls in the “just annoying” category. Note that if a friend of yours complains that he infected his computer with this and blames you – you can tell him that you were only the same level of careless as he was – since he had to also hit “accept” to get infected.
As always – if you have a computer question – feel free to stop by or call or send an email. Absolute Computers is located in Cary, North Carolina – we are convenient for folks in Angier, Apex, Cary (of course), Chapel Hill, Clayton, Durham, Fuquay Varina, Garner, Knightdale, Holly Springs, Morrisville, Raleigh, Wake Forest and Zebulon. We have folks that drive here with their computers from Fayetteville, Rocky Mount, Sanford and Wilson. Finally we have people ship us their computers from across the US.
Remember that you can drop off your computer for a free diagnostic which is a description of what we found and a quote for fixing it. At that point, you can either pick it up for no charge or authorize us to do the repair.