In an inevitable turn of events, cybercriminals were found leveraging the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs through Facebook scams within hours after it was announced. The particular scam involves a website which claims that Apple has decided to give away 1000 iPads, in memory of Steve Jobs.
The said site displays the following:
The site asks users to share the page in order to be eligible. After the user follows the instructions, he is directed to an ad site, while in the background, the link is posted on their Facebook wall.
“œAs dubious as the offer sounds, it seems like some users are falling for the scheme. Here in TrendLabs we are seeing increasing number of posts bearing the website’s URL,” Marco deLa Vega, Trend Micro, Threats Researcher.
The catch behind this scam is that there is no such offer from Apple, and that only ones who will get anything from this are the cybercriminals, who will earn money from the displayed ads every time a user is tricked into following the instructions. Also, as more users share the link, the number of potential victims also increases, as well as the profit for the scammers behind it.
“œThe deaths of known persons have become staple topics of social engineering schemes for the past years. Just a couple of months ago, we saw scams that took advantage of the death of singer Amy Winehouse, as well as rumors about the death of Lady Gaga. We are strongly advising users not to click on posts like these if they see them on their Facebook newsfeeds. We also suggest users to educate those who have been tricked to stop the spread of such scams,” Dela Vega added.
Access to the mentioned website is now blocked through the Web Reputation Service. Users of the latest Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security are also protected from this through the Social Networking Security feature.