In a tragic incident, flight Lieutenant Jon Egging’s Hawk T1 jet crashed into a river during the Bournemouth Air Festival yesterday, after which he was pronounced dead. This disastrous incident has got scammers to increase users’ curiosity by creating sensational headlines and promising them to show the crash video on Facebook.
The scam titled – “Red Arrow crashes during air show” leads to a Facebook page that contains an image which appears like a real YouTube player. Clicking on the play button will click-jack and like-jack your Facebook account automatically, and will reload the page with a set of surveys, which you will be asked to complete them in order to watch the video.
However, there is no point in completing any steps or surveys, because there is no video shown at the end of the process. Scammers post Facebook scam messages like this to get users to “like” the message and complete surveys.
This scam is similar to the recent death video of the infamous Osama Bin Laden, Justin Bieber scam, Miley Cyrus scam, teen from Egypt commits suicide scam and girl killed herself after dad posted on here wall scam. The mode of operation of all these scams is similar, as they entice users to click on a link and then ask them to fill a survey while posting an update to their wall.
Scammers earn money by getting users to complete online surveys. Sometimes, users are asked to purchase surveys using credit cards, and the entered card details will be sent to the scammers, which could be further misused. They are also used to spread malware and obtain personal information.
If you come across this message, please ignore it or delete it from your news feed. Alternatively, you can report it to the Facebook Security team, and prevent other Facebook members from falling for the trap.
As a precautionary measure, always check which applications you use and remove unwanted or suspicious ones. If you aren’t sure how to do it, you can always check our guide on removing apps from Facebook. In addition to that, don’t forget to check out our article about Avoiding Facebook Lifejacking and Clickjacking scams. Here’s an article that might help you protect your Facebook account from hackers – How to Prevent Your Facebook Account from Getting Hacked
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