Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 Scam

 Business News: Facebook Scam! Sketchy Advertisers Exploit MH17 Victims to Send Traffic to Pop-Up Ad Sights

Carole VanSickle Ellis | July 21, 2014 |
In a demonstration of how hackers and internet scammers hold true to the now-time-worn adage, “never let a good crisis go to waste,” Facebook scammers have leapt into action in the wake of the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 by terrorists and set up pages claiming to show the actual crash itself or pay tribute to dead individuals involved in the crash[1]. These pages lead to external websites that promote counterfeit drugs and offer adult materials and activities. Facebook has removed many of the pages, but the website to which they link remains live. It is registered in Bucharest, Romania and has an ISP in the Netherlands. Scammers frequently use public interest in disaster in order to boost hits to certain websites because even individuals who are not usually susceptible to their advertising will click on questionable links in order to obtain more information. “It’s a great opportunity to prey on people’s vulnerabilities and emotion is the greatest one,” explained chairman of the Australian chapter of the International Association of Cybercrime Prevention Ken Gamble.
While many of the pages are largely harmless and not technically illegal – although they are obviously heartless and insensitive – some of the pages may be being used to steal personal information from people who wish to donate to support families of the victims or even to create living online personalities for the dead victims in an attempt to use credit cards and other personal information recovered from the wreckage. Ukrainian MP Anton Gerashchenko asked in a recent post to his own Facebook page that “the relatives of victims freeze their credit cards so that they won’t lose their assets to terrorists.” Journalists are reporting that “every bag… [in the wreckage] has been opened…[and] rummaged through,” likely by “death hunters” who ransack disaster scenes for items of value that they hope will never be missed by the dead or their living relatives[2].
Although Facebook has removed many of the pages, in most cases the social network does not forcibly remove content unless it can be proven to be illegal. Do you think that this is a case where Facebook should take down all unofficial tribute pages? Have you fallen victim to this bait-and-switch information scam?
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