Monday, 21 July 2014

Facebook scammers prey on MH17 victims by setting up fake tribute pages in their names to drive traffic to dodgy pop-up ad site


The names and photos of Australian MH17 plane crash victims are being exploited by online scammers who have set up fake Facebook tribute pages to drive traffic to a dodgy external website.
 
The Facebook pages, created on the day the plane crashed, baited people to click on another website with a link purporting to show footage of the MH17 disaster.
 
'Video Camera Caught the moment plane MH17 Crash over Ukraine.Watch here the video of Crash,' the link read.

Scammers have created fake Facebook accounts for MH17 victims, including the three young Perth children who died with their grandfather

Victims targeted by the scam include young Perth siblings Otis, Evie and Mo Maslin, Canberra woman Liliane Derden and Fatima Dyczynski, who was born in Germany but was on flight MH17 because she was moving to Perth.
 
The scam also exploited the names of victims from other countries, including Quinn Lucas Schansman from the US, British-born Kiwi Rob Ayley, Malaysia Airlines pilot Eugene Choo Jin Leong  and Richard Mayne, Ben Pocock and Liam Sweeney from the UK.

Online fraud experts said the pages were in poor taste but would only be forcibly removed by Facebook if they were criminal

Facebook has taken down the pages but the external site goalshighlights.com remains live. It was registered in Bucharest, Romania in 2010 and the ISP address tracks back to the Netherlands.
 
Ken Gamble, chairman of the Australian chapter of the International Association of Cybercrime Prevention, said it looked like the website had been hacked in order to divert to adult hook up websites and others selling counterfeit drugs.



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