14 DAY TRIAL // A report which you can swear is posted on BBC's website tries to dupe people into enrolling to a fake “Make money from home” job.
Thanks to Graham Cluley, we come across a regular spam attempt that in the end turns out to be something special. And because it seems that today is the day when all fake websites are exposed, this time the BBC News site is replicated in order to add credibility to a typical scam.
When the link from the spam message is clicked, it takes the user to a page that looks exactly like a BBC News page and reveals what seems to be a genuine article posted by a legitimate editor.
The title reads “How a small investment turned into a $14,200+ a month, we investigate..” Upon seeing such a headline on such a trustworthy page, anyone would be fooled into believing that there's actually something they can get out of this story.
The reader is convinced that by working from home they can earn “up to $77 per hour” and even if these types of tricks are old news and most people would know to avoid them, you might tend to trust them a bit if you considered the source.
Only a close look at the address bar would reveal the true identity of the scam, as the URL is “www.bbc11.co.uk”, which is a clear clue that something is amiss.
A clever trick deployed by the scammers is that the sub-headline of the story mentions that a “single mother from Abingdon” made the huge profits, but the name of the town actually varies depending on your IP address, to make the whole thing even more appealing.
The purpose of these types of articles, as always, is to highlight the new and ingenious ways used by con artists in their attempts to earn your trust and steal your money, so try to stay alert and double-check everything, especially the things that seem too good to be true.