Fortunately, this is not the freshest Rihanna scoop you’ve missed on TMZ. It’s a Facebook post I just found that set the alarm bells in my head, so I set out to investigate.
Clicking the link of this supposedly scandalous video leads to this page (Note that the URL is already something outside of the said social networking site, which is ezreality(dot)tk/):
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Clicking the play button of the player displays a text on the screen which says:
Restriction: To start the video, please share it again and click the >> play << button
If users click the Share button, they are sent to the legitimate Facebook login page where they can enter their credentials if they’re not logged in. If they are, a browser window opens to show them exactly what will be posted on their Facebook wall.
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Sharing this video, as it turns out, is not an option. If users ignore the text displayed on the screen and click the play button the second time, a window pops up to remind them that they have to share the video before it can be played. There’s no way around this one.
Once shared and the the play button is hit, users are led to a video of Rihanna overlaid with a survey:
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Survey scams have been plaguing Facebook users for the longest time, and scammers never fail to get someone to click on their links-and a lot of users are falling for these. It’s not that the scammers’ technique is sophisticated enough. It’s how they socially engineer scams to make them too interesting for anyone to pass up. Below are a just few of these scams on this social networking site that we’ve spotted:
- To Know or Not to Know: That is the Facebook Question
- The fake BBC video Facebook scam returns
- Profile Watch pops surveys on Facebook
We encourage users to abide by this general safety rule when browsing Facebook: Refrain from clicking links, especially those that come with a video, from anyone on your stream that has a titillating, if not controversial, hook. More than likely, it’s just bait for something nasty in the end.
Jovi Umawing (Thanks to Chris for the assist)
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