Scammers are attempting to exploit the death of Fast and Furious actor Paul Walker through posts and private messages on Facebook. The scam sends a message or link claiming to be to video footage of the actor’s fatal car wreck. The posts, designed to emulate news headlines, often feature graphic images supposedly showing the star’s mutilated face. The posts invite users to click a link to view “Shocking Video” of the crash.
When clicked, the link will lead the person to an installation page for an app that it says you have to have to view the footage.
Of course, the footage doesn’t exist and the app installs either in Facebook or the user’s browser. These steal the user’s profile and use it to send messages to friends. Often, while this is going on, the app will then send the user to survey sites and claim that they must fill out a survey before seeing the video.
The surveys, of course, are paid surveys that the scammers get credit (and thus paid) for and the malicious apps or browser plug-ins could be doing even more.
Never, ever install anything from a website unless you know exactly what it is you’re installing. This is the number one way computer scams work.
