More often than not, we yield to that innate curiosity in us, regardless of whether it’s for our own good or not. If we’re not careful, we may have unknowingly contributed to the spreading of a scam wherein everyone loses and only the social engineer behind it wins.
[EXCLUSIVE VIDEO] Uncut! Mermaid found inside a shark!
NEVER SEEN BEFORE! Mermaid found inside a shark! RARE FOOTAGE!
If you frequent the Animal Planet channel like me, you may have suddenly thought of that faux-umentary called “Mermaids Attacked by Giant Shark” back in 2013 and suspect that this scam may likely be inspired by it.
This new scam is similar to that scam about an angry bear we found and wrote about in February of this year. Its page also sport a believable Facebook interface that leads to an equally believable fake YouTube page hosting a survey scam.
Another EXCLUSIVE! scam post on Facebook
“Wait, an ‘adult’ video? Where’s my chewed mermaid!”
Perhaps the most alarming and worrying of all this (at least for me) is the fact that an official Facebook page of a local government body fell for the scam and shared it to its thousands of friends and Twitter followers. Its only saving grace, perhaps, was the journalist who spotted the tweet quickly and offered a solution to the person manning the account in the hopes that nothing like this should happen again in the future. Kudos for that, sir!
This scam isn’t the first of its kind to hit the Web. In late January of this year, Facebook users made viral a supposed video of a mermaid caught sleeping on a rock. Around the same time, a fake clip surfaced about a mermaid corpse washed up on the shores of Gators Pass.
To our avid blog readers, let’s avoid clicking and/or sharing this scam. Also, it won’t hurt to remind your friends and followers to do the same.
Other related post/s:
- “Hungry Bear Tears Woman to Pieces” Facebook Video Scam
- Fake Flight MH370 Videos Being Shared on Twitter and Facebook
- Malicious Messages Foray Facebook
- Fake Facebook Notification Emails Lead to Upatre Malware
Jovi Umawing
I clicked it, so is deleting it enough or do I need to do something else?
Scam is so funny -_-, I remember the old dayz where fake antivirus programs installed themselves on computers, does that still happen?
Hello, LynNae 🙂 The scam I studied didn’t download any malware. It simply leads users to fake sites promising a video clip. If the mermaid scam you encountered didn’t download a file, I think you’re generally fine. Just don’t answer the survey 🙂
Fake AV had a major decline last year, coincidentally giving rise to the prevalence of ransomware. But even before then, there were signs that fake AV was on its way out.
I’m personally not monitoring fake AVs at the moment, but I doubt we’ll be seeing them soon 🙂