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Don’t fall for Whitney Houston death scams

News
Feb 13, 20121 min
CybercrimeSecuritySocial Networking Apps

Predictably, scammers have incorporated news of the pop icon's death into their social engineering games.

Whenever someone famous dies, scammers waste no time exploiting the news to dupe people intoclicking on malicious links.

Such is the case following the untimely death of singer Whitney Houston.

According to various security and news sources, including Help Net Security, scammers quickly launched a Facebook assault where users are tricked into clicking on messages posted on their friends’ timelines saying things like “I Cried watching this video. RIP Whitney Houston” and offering a link to a “Whitney Houston Death Video Exclusive”.

From Help Net Security:

“Clicking on the link takes the users to a Facebook page that contains another link to the video, which then leads them to a survey scam site via a number of redirections. Twitter users suffered a similar attack. Clicking on the link included in a tweet saying “RIP Whitney Houston”, they are initially taken to a blog dedicated to Houston but are redirected to another site offering a number of Whitney Houston wallpapers for download.”

Be careful out there, folks.