The scammers take advantage of every incident to trick people and get some bucks or likes on social media. Same is going on right now with the heartbreaking incident of missing Malaysian plane flight number MH370.
An alert for all our readers! A fake news about the missing Malaysian plane flight number MH370 is being circulated all over the Internet in which scammers are luring users to earn money by clicking a malicious video.
First it will ask you to verify your age, just to feel like the link is trustworthy.
Once you click the link, it redirects you to a malicious website.
This is how the preview of scam links looks like
Note the URL address in the screenshot given below:
This is how the fake video scam link looks on Facebook
According to AlArabia, several articles and posts have been made on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms with catchy headlines and images such as:
- Malaysia Plane (MH-370) Has Been Found Near Bermuda Triangle. BBC News: Recent Video Released!”
The scam goes viral on Twitter
- Shocking Video: Malaysian Airlines missing flight MH370 found at sea”
- Malaysian Airplane MH370 Already Found. Shocking Video Release Today by CNN”
- Plane has been spotted somewhere near Bermuda triangle. Shocking videos released today. CNN news”
That is how it’s preview on Facebook looks like
- MH370 Malaysia plane has been found. Shocking videos released today. The last video of passengers crying released”
Christopher Boyd of Malwarebytes blog wrote a brief analysis on the ongoing scam, according to which:
- Unfortunately, we have to warn you that scammers are looking to make some money off the back of the disappearance of Flight MH370 via the usual social media channels. The links typically lead to fake news / video sites, and encourage visitors to share the links to social media channels then either fill in surveys or click on adverts. It goes without saying that they won’t be shown a crash video at the end of this process, because there is no crash video – just a sick hoax,”
This is not the first time when thugs and scammers have taken advantage of a heartbreaking incident. During the Philippines earthquake last year and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011, similar scams went viral.
