There's A Sickening Scam On Facebook Which is Exploiting Robin Williams' Suicide

by Alex Heber
August 20, 2014 at 3:10pm

Populating many Facebook feeds this week have been scam posts taking advantage of Robin Williams' tragic suicide.

The posts which are shared unknowingly by your Facebook friends claim to include a "last phone call" video and are designed to sell social media user's information.

Clicking on this post takes you to a website which asks you first to share the post on your own Facebook wall and then take a short survey.

IT security company ESET said scammers earn money for every person they trick in to completing the survey.

"You would have to be pretty ghoulish to proceed any further, but the truth is that the internet has deadened our sensitivities and made many of us all too willing to watch unpleasant thing on our computer screens," ESET security analyst Graham Cluley said.

"By tricking thousands of people into taking a survey, in the misbelief that they will watch the final moments of a comedy legend whose life ended tragically, the scammers aim to make affiliate cash.

"Because every survey that is taken earns them some cents--and the more people they can drive toward the survey (even if they use the bait of a celebrity death video), the more money will end up in their pockets. In other cases, scammers have used such tricks to install malware or sign users up for expensive premium rate mobile phone services."

The Australian government's Stay Safe Online initiative also sent out an alert warning of the threat. This is one of many scams targeting disasters and tragedies as scammers prey on events of global concern. The scams are easily interchanged to suit new events," it said.

The advice is not to share or like anything on Facebook unless you are confident it is safe.

"You should be suspicious of any post that requires you to blindly share posts or provide personal information," Stay Safe Online said in its warning.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/theres-a-sickening-scam-on-facebook-which-is-exploiting-robin-williams-suicide-2014-8/ 

Your personal information just isn't safe

By Jose Pagliery
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Companies can't keep your data safe. It's that simple.

When Target lost data on some 110 million customers, it recommended them to credit bureau Experian for "identity theft protection," offering to cover the cost for a year.
Think you're in better hands? Think again.

Sometime before the Target (TGT) hack, Experian had its own data leak--via a subsidiary. That data leak got plugged before Target sent victims to Experian. But it shows that even those entrusted with our most sensitive data don't know how to protect it.

Experian unknowingly sold the personal data of millions of Americans--including Social Security numbers--to a fraudster in Vietnam. That guy then sold the personal information to identity thieves around the globe.

It wasn't until U.S. Secret Service agents alerted Experian that the company stopped.

Hieu Minh Ngo, now 25, was caught and admitted to posing as a private investigator in Singapore to get exclusive access to data via Court Ventures, an Experian subsidiary. Ngo then sold access to fellow criminals.

Federal investigators say that let criminals reach databases with hundreds of millions of Americans' personal data including:

• names
• addresses
• Social Security numbers
• birthdays
• work history
• driver's license numbers
• email addresses
• banking information

Criminals tapped that database 3.1 million times, investigators said. Surprised you haven't heard this? It's because Experian is staying quiet about it.

It's been more than a year since Experian was notified of the leak. Yet the company still won't say how many American's were affected. 

CNNMoney asked Experian to detail the scope of the breach. The company refused.

"As we've said consistently, it is an unfortunate and isolated issue--one that did not affect Experian's databases and has no true relevance to the work we did with clients like Target," Experian spokesman Gerry Tschopp said.

Federal court filings show that at least one database actually belonged to another firm--U.S. Info Search. It was Experian's subsidiary that sold database access to Ngo.

Target and Experian insist that the credit monitoring service is unrelated to the incident involving Experian's data-selling business.

But even Experian's credit monitoring service, which collects data on customers, isn't immune.

According to Barry Kouns, a security professional who maintains a Cyber Risk Analytic database of major data breaches, said Experian's databases have been involved in 97 breaches of personal information.

"Based on our research, it appears that data brokers place a high value on collecting and using our information but not so much protecting it," Kouns said.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/25/technology/security/target-experian/index.html