ESET Ireland

The very morning we learned about the tragedy that struck Japan, we warned about upcoming online scams, and sure enough, a couple of days later as the disaster is unfolding, more and more fake news and other scams are surfacing.

Gripping titles on your Facebook friends’ walls, that you just cannot resist clicking? Facecrooks is following these scams closely. According to them, clicking play anywhere on the page will “click-jack and like-jack” your account, and you will be spreading the spam message via your Facebook news feed. Then you have to “verify your age”, which is a survey scam. Each time someone completes a survey – the scam creator gets a commission. You will not see a video of the giant wave, but the scammer will have more of your private information. If you downloaded any games or other files then your computer could be infecting with a virus, trojan or other malware.

You can read details of more similar Facebook scams in Destructive Japan Tsunami Caught On Film and Giant tsunami wave eats boat as earthquake hits Japan.

ESET has been collecting resources on Japan disaster scams and even more are listed in Earthquake/Tsunami (Anti-)Scam Resources by David Harley. David has already blogged at ESET on the inevitability of the Japanese earthquake and consequent tsunamis as a hook for BHSEO (Black Hat Search Engine Optimization), in order to lure people searching for more news onto site pushing fake AV and other unpleasant criminal backscatter. So have a look at the resources and don’t get scammed.

Oh, and while you weren’t looking, they slipped a few celeb ones in among the disaster ones as well. “Proof That Lady Gaga is a MAN!” is, of course, a scam too. More details on it provided by Facecrooks.