Amy Winehouse death video scams hit Facebook

Very often 'significant' events bring the scammers out of the woodwork. The death of Amy Winehouse just like the death of Osama Bin Laden have brought them out again. Our interest in prurient video, photos etc can cause many to click on a link purporting to be from a reliable source.

As far as we know, there is no video footage of her death. The only thing you will get is possibly a computer virus.

Don't click on any links saying you can see such video.

By Rosa Golijan (MSNBC.Com)

As soon as the news that singer Amy Winehouse was found dead in her London home hit the Internet, the usual reactions began flooding in. There were plenty of touching tributes, a handful of cruel jokes, and a wave of emotional tweets. And now there's the almost obligatory series of Facebook scams which seems to follow a well-publicized death.

Sophos reports that the first scams started popping up barely four hours after the 27-year-old singer's death was confirmed. The only comforting news is that the schemes are simple and familiar: Scammers attempt to lure individuals into clicking a link out of sheer morbid curiosity.

Just as many were tricked into compromising the security of their Facebook accounts or computers by links claiming to lead to photos or videos of Osama bin Laden's death a few months ago, folks are now being lured into helping cold-hearted and malicious scammers profit by following links offering video footage taken hours before Winehouse passed away:

Sophos

This is how one of the links related to the Amy Winehouse death video scam might look on Facebook.

As Sophos explains, these links most certainly do not actually contain videos of the deceased singer's final hours, but instead lead to online surveys from which the scammers earn a commission — as well as a pop-up message which tricks victims into exposing their friends to the scam.

So what can you do to protect yourself? Think twice before clicking a link you discover in your News Feed — is the friend who shared it really the type who would "like" a video like that? — and keep an eye out for peculiar pop-ups.

And if you get suckered into a scam like this despite being careful? It's ok, it happens to the best of us. But there are a few things you should do:

• Check the security settings on your Facebook account. Did you really authorize all the apps and websites which are interacting with your Facebook account? No? Take access away from the ones which look unfamiliar.

Click on Links at Your Own Peril!

One very strong recommendation we have and continue to hammer home is that: You should not click on links contained in emails unless you know with 100% certainty where it will take you. Sometimes it is easy to see but often it is not. 

Clicking on a link can take you deep into a rat's nest of infected websites and your computer can become infected with a variety of computer viruses or other malware.

It is better to be safe than sorry later - don't click links. Often, when we are sent an email with a link we will simply send a note back to the sender saying 'I do not click on links in emails, can you kindly tell me what that link goes to, is for etc'.?

More time, effort being devoted to stopping spam e-mails

In a scenario all too familiar to many, Highlands Ranch resident Ron Gabbert's computer went haywire shortly after he clicked on a link that appeared in one of a slew of unsolicited e-mails."I opened something, and all of a sudden it would go to another screen," said Gabbert, a retired teacher. "It would start taking you through things, and you'd try to get out of it and it'd just ignore you."
Despite federal and state laws enacted in recent years to help cut down on spam, junk e-mails continue to flood inboxes. In 2010, the global spam rate increased slightly from a year earlier to 89.1 percent, meaning nearly nine out of 10 e-mails sent were junk, according to a report by Symantec, a maker of antivirus software.

Source: Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_18403584