14 DAY TRIAL // Robert Duvall has apparently died while filming a movie in New Zealand, according to posts circulating on social media websites. In reality, the actor is alive and well, but he did join the ranks of celebrities who have been recently declared dead.
A couple of days ago, Twitter started buzzing with news that the actor might have died in an accident in New Zealand. Many of the posts contained a link that apparently led to a legitimate news website that confirmed the news.
“Preliminary reports from New Zealand Police officials indicate that the actor fell more than 60 feet to his death on the Kauri Cliffs while on-set. Specific details are not yet available,” the article reads.
However, a closer look at the website shows that it’s not an actual news site, but a service that’s specially designed for such pranks. The user simply replaces the name of the subdomain with the name of the victim and they’re presented with an apparently legitimate news story.
We will not share the name of the site because there are enough such hoaxes as it is, and advertising it even more certainly doesn’t help.
Besides Robert Duvall, a number of other celebrities have been falsely declared dead this month. John Cena died while practicing a move with The Rock, Bill Nye the Science Guy died of unknown causes, and so did comedy actor Bill Cosby.
Once again we advise users to refrain from clicking on links that accompany shady announcements. In this case they only pointed to a fake news site, but they could just as well be taking victims to a malware-laden website.
Be sure to check out legitimate news sources before rushing to re-tweet or share messages such as these to avoid contributing to spam campaigns.