Facebook Scammers Exploit Robin Williams’ Death

Not too long ago, we reported on the tragic and unfortunate death by suicide of actor and comedian Robin Williams.

Some people have now decided to utilize this tragedy for their own personal gain. You may have seen a ‘video link’ (as above) on your news feed recently, either though posts from certain Facebook pages or it being shared directly from your friends – do not click!

Once clicked, a webpage will open which forces you to share the link on your own timeline then complete a survey, after which it claims this video will be available to you. When the survey is completed, there is no light at the end of the tunnel, no Robin Williams video displayed and you’ve only managed to do one thing – give these guys ad revenue.

Unfortunately, this is another case of “social engineering” which basically means manipulating people into clicking malicious links. Quite often you’ll see things like “Doctors hate him!”, “You’ll never know what happens next!” or even “Click here for this one secret!” – quite often the titles are too good to be true.

So how do you spot out  a malicious advertisement in your news feed? We understand that it’s not always easy. As we said before, usually the information is too good to be true. If it’s shared directly by a Facebook friend it might be worth you sending them a quick message just to ask the legitimacy of their shared link – quite often they might not even be aware of whats going on.

So far this scam has over 24 million shares on Facebook and is growing.

Security expert and blogger Graham Cluley shares similar thoughts on this news:

“The scammers have no qualms about exploiting the death of a famous actor and comedian to earn their cash, and give no thought whatsoever to the distressed family he must have left behind”

Have you seen a rise in this type of marketing scam recently? How do you combat the issue personally?

Image courtesy of Yahoo