It’s a case of New Year, Same Old Tricks as we warn you about the inevitable bandwagon jumping of scammers who really don’t care what they use as clickbait.
If you’re waiting on information with regards what caused the tragic crash of AirAsia Flight QZ8501, please be aware that the inevitable fake Facebook video links are now putting in an appearance.
Here’s one, located at
bergkids(dot)com/qz8501
The page is pretty bare, save for the imagery of what they claim is the plane in question and the following text:
[CRASH VIDEO] AirAsia Flight QZ8501 Crashed near east coast of Sumatera.
Clicking the play button encourages Facebook users to share it, before being redirected to an imitation YouTube page located at
urvashi(dot)altervista(dot)org/video/vid(dot)php
While visitors might think this would be the video in question, in actual fact they’re looking at a sort of fake video farm where clicking the link takes them to a wide variety of phony clip scams. From the redirection page code:
Once again, they’re asked to share. The share button claiming “60k” have shared the video is just an image file hosted at Imgur.
From there, they’re then directed to one of the links in the screenshot above. There’s everything from “You won’t eat [product x] again after seeing this” to non-existent leaked celebrity tapes. Disturbingly, two of the pages claim to show car accidents and one of them uses a rather graphic photograph. Given that people could be arriving there from a personal need to find out more information about the plane crash, this is just more proof that the people behind these pages couldn’t care less.
All of the above pages return the visitor to the “main” Altervista URL, where they’ll be asked to share then be sent to another of the links in the redirect code.
It seems to be a way of trying to drop the links on as many feeds as possible (assuming the Facebook account owner changes the share option from “just me” to people in their social circles).
Should the weary clicker grow tired of this digital roundabout and simply sit on the altervista page too long, they’ll find that they’re automatically sent to a page called “Horrific Video”:
Unlike the other pages which simply loop potential victims around while asking them to share links, this one will take them to a survey page if the video “player” is clicked.
As with all other survey pages, the links could lead to everything from offers and personal questions to ringtone signups or software installs and are usually served up according to region. Here’s an install offer we saw:
If you want to know the latest information on the AirAsia crash, please stick to news sources you know and trust.
It’s extremely unlikely someone is going to have exclusive footage sitting on some video website you’ve near heard of, and the moment you’re caught in a loop of “Share this on Facebook to view” messages you can bet there’s nothing on offer except someone trying to make a fast buck.
Christopher Boyd
