Just like in all the other cases where an
important public figure passes to the afterlife, it’s no different with
the death of the famous singer Whitney Houston. Cybercriminals already
started leveraging her death to spread survey scams that fill their
pockets with tons of money from affiliate marketing sites.
Trend Micro researchers came across these scams both on Twitter and Facebook walls, advertising an exclusive video that allegedly shows how the celebrity died.
The Facebook scam bears the subject “I cried watching this video. RIP Whitney Houston” and leads to a phony video webpage that redirects the unsuspecting victim to a survey site which requests sensitive information.
On Twitter, the situation is even worse. Since Whitney Houston’s death became a trending topic, crooks use this to their advantage and post false messages. The Twitter variant redirects users to a website that offers wallpapers and ringtones, but eventually it still leads to the same type of survey page.
Further investigations revealed that the schemes are not run by a new crew of cybercriminals. Instead the Whitney Houston scam is just an addition to the other more than 100 survey scams domains registered on the same IP where the domains are hosted.
Internet users are advised to be extra cautious while surfing social media websites, especially Facebook and Twitter, since they’re known to house a large number of malicious schemes, cleverly disguised to look like an out-of-the-ordinary video or a fabulous prize.
In reality, they’re all designed to lead to malicious browser plug-ins, survey scams, in which the crooks earn money for each visitor they redirect, and other pieces of malware that are specially created to steal sensitive information from the infected devices.
Trend Micro researchers came across these scams both on Twitter and Facebook walls, advertising an exclusive video that allegedly shows how the celebrity died.
The Facebook scam bears the subject “I cried watching this video. RIP Whitney Houston” and leads to a phony video webpage that redirects the unsuspecting victim to a survey site which requests sensitive information.
On Twitter, the situation is even worse. Since Whitney Houston’s death became a trending topic, crooks use this to their advantage and post false messages. The Twitter variant redirects users to a website that offers wallpapers and ringtones, but eventually it still leads to the same type of survey page.
Further investigations revealed that the schemes are not run by a new crew of cybercriminals. Instead the Whitney Houston scam is just an addition to the other more than 100 survey scams domains registered on the same IP where the domains are hosted.
Internet users are advised to be extra cautious while surfing social media websites, especially Facebook and Twitter, since they’re known to house a large number of malicious schemes, cleverly disguised to look like an out-of-the-ordinary video or a fabulous prize.
In reality, they’re all designed to lead to malicious browser plug-ins, survey scams, in which the crooks earn money for each visitor they redirect, and other pieces of malware that are specially created to steal sensitive information from the infected devices.
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| Whitney Houston Death Video Facebook and Twitter Scams |
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