14 DAY TRIAL // One of the latest scams circulating on Facebook tries to trick the social network’s users into believing that Sylvester Stallone died in a car accident; the endgame of the deceit is to make users give up personal information and completing online surveys.
The success of the scam may also be fueled by the fact that the celebrity’s Twitter feed remained unaltered since June 5, this year, when he posted a picture of his daughter in a horse competition.
In the post released by the crooks, and which claims to offer a video, it is said that Sly was the victim of his driver being drunk at the wheel and failing to see a truck that crushed the car.
The signs of this being just another Facebook scam are quite obvious, the first one being that the news somehow escaped the major media publications. Next, in order to see the “footage,” users have to share the information on the timeline.
Another clue is that an online survey has to be completed for access to the video. This is actually the purpose of the scam, as crooks are remunerated for this type of activity.
A car aficionado may even become suspicious just by looking at the picture, which shows a sports car, not exactly the type of vehicle to have a driver for.
Although falling for completing a few online surveys may not sound like an activity that can put users at risk, cybercriminals try to make the most of their campaigns and they oftentimes ask for personal information from the potential victim.
Email address and phone numbers are generally the coveted details as they can be used in other malicious campaigns. Also, these can be sold to marketing companies, or other crooks, and used for sending unsolicited email messages.
According to Hoax-Slayer, in this case, as soon as the user clicks on the link included in the post, they are taken to a bogus web page that resembles Facebook.
It is populated with fake messages designed to eliminate the suspicions of a scam. The fake posts include instructions to how the video can be watched as well as opinions of those claiming to have seen the footage.
In other similar scams the perpetrators used real tragedies to deceive users, such as the one about Robin Williams’ death, which purported to provide a video with a goodbye message from the actor.