14 DAY TRIAL // Saucy events in the entertainment industry in particular are the perfect bait online scammers seek, and some fake news relating to the divorce between rapper Wiz Khalifa and glamor girl Amber Rose fit with their purpose.
An online survey campaign is currently circulating on Facebook preying on the attention the two celebrities received from the media these days.
As speculations about the reason of the split are fueled by publications through reports from more or less accurate sources, scammers proceeded to invent their own piece of news, claiming that a video tape of Amber Rose and Nick Cannon emerged online.
The crooks distribute a fake message pretending to lead to the alleged video. A redacted image is also provided for more credibility.
However, as the curious social network user soon finds out, the path to playing the video has several hoops to jump through, and they end up completing online surveys, thus making money for the scammers.
Signs of deceit
As Online Threat Alerts reports, clicking on the link in the deceiving message takes the potential victim outside the social media portal, to an online spot impersonating a Facebook page.
Fake comments are generally available on such sites, only to trick the victim into sinking deeper into the scam and filling those surveys.
In order to watch the video, users are asked to share the unverified information, which is never a good idea.
A clear clue that this is actually a scam is given in the very message that reaches the potential victim, because the video thumb appears to be from a clip on YouTube, yet the general impression is that it renders specific adult content. If such videos pop up on Google’s video sharing site, they are quickly removed.
Facebook scams are risky business
Online surveys scams may appear as quite an innocent type of deception because completing them consists in just choosing an answer; but oftentimes crooks ask for personal details at the beginning, such as an email address or the phone number.
This information can be used for more lucrative malicious purposes, phishing being one of the most spread and successful forms of attack.
In some cases, users are taken to dangerous online locations that host exploit kits trying to find a vulnerable software to surreptitiously deliver malware on the system.
The bottom line is that most victims do not know what lurks at the other end. Preventing falling for these scams is as simple as refusing to click on the links.