14 DAY TRIAL // Wayne Knight, the actor best known for his role as Newman in Seinfeld is not dead, but pranksters want users to think he is.
The bogus posts making the rounds carry the title “Seinfeld Actor ‘Newman’ Killed in Tractor-Trailer Accident” and they read something like this:
“Actor Wayne Knight, better known to most for playing one of the most indelible roles on NBC's 'Seinfeld' as the charater ‘Newman’ is dead and two other'passengers'are critically injured after their vehicle slammed into a disabled semi-tractor-trailer late Saturday night along Route 446 near the Pennsylvania-New York state border in Eldred Township.”
As Hoax Slayer highlights, the bogus report about Knight’s death was published on a website called eBuzzd, which specializes in such false stories. A similar article has been published on a website that replicates the popular tabloid TMZ.
It appears that many people thought that the bogus stories about Knight dying in a car accident were real. The actor posted the following message on Twitter:
“Some of you will be glad to hear this, others strangely disappointed, but….I am alive and well!”
So now that we’ve established that Wayne Knight is not dead, let’s take a look at the implications of spreading such bogus messages on social media networks. In this particular case, the purpose of this celebrity death hoax is to lure users to the fake TMZ and the eBuzzd websites.
While in this case there’s nothing malicious about these sites, using shocking or popular stories to attract attention is a common tactic used by cybercriminals or scammers.
In order to contribute to making the Internet safer, users are advised to check out the legitimacy of a story before forwarding it. While this time the links point to some harmless sites, next time they could take victims to malware, or phishing sites.