Scams and Click Bait!

I don't know if any of you have been watching your Facebook feed's lately, but there has been an increase in the amount of crap that comes across the feed.  Primarily because users seem to be just clicking away on Spam or a Scam which then re-shares the crap to the next user and so on and so forth.  Here is a little bit of security related information.

1.  If you see someone share or tag you in a "Free $250.00 Walmart Gift Card", guaranteed it is probably a scam.  You may be thinking that "Can't hurt to try this out and see what I get".  Well in fact, it can cause some irreversible damage.  When you actually follow these links, it's some sort of survey where you give up some of your personal information.  Then you must subscribe to something like Netflix or a Magazine or something of that nature.  But lets focus on the first few thing you give up.  You may think that you are providing the necessary information to receive your "Free Gift Card", but in fact, you are giving up your personal information such as Address, Phone Number, Full Name, Birth Date, etc to someone that is most likely not in the United States.  Surely you've seen this on Social Media:

Even Walmart has acknowledged the fact the this is a SCAM!! And yet there are still people that click on this crap.  All you are doing is populating someone database of user information so that it can be used against you later.  Come On PEOPLE!!  I actually researched the last URL I saw accompany this photo.  Don't try to go here please, I've also replace the "Http" part of this URL. hxxp://february2502015promotions[.]ml/?aa10 - This URL is a known Web and Email Spam URL.  After I researched a bit more, it also contains malware (the not so good stuff on the internet).  While the specific type of malware that was on the website is not known, I wasn't going to go there and actually download said malware and infect my computer.  But is could be anything from a trojan/virus to a simple script running in the background to possible gather more information than what you want to give up.  Something else to notice on this link.  The ".ml" is a top-level domain which identifies the country.  .ml is the top-level domain for Mali.  I'm pretty sure they aren't handing out Walmart Gift Cards to the United States.  Just a word of advice, DON'T CLICK ON THIS CRAP!!!!

2.  Click Bait.  Whoever thought of click bait should be shot!  Seriously, all of these news outlets are now enticing users to click on the link by giving part of the story (usually the juicy part) so that they will get to their website.  The problem here is that it's hard to tell the difference between a real "Click Bait Link" and a false one......because EVERYONE USES THEM NOW.  You always see the "Look what happens when this guy does this".  You won't know what happens unless you click on it.  Please only follow known good links.  The publisher of the story can typically be found at the bottom left of the story on social media links.  If it's published by Jumbo News Story Company, it's probably not something you need to be clicking on.  Just saying.  Use a bit of common sense here.  Verify the Link before clicking on it.  Look at the top-level domain.  If it's out of country in some obscure place reporting on things that are supposed to be happening in your backyard, probably not true.  Truthfully, if the news outlets reporting the "Truth" (I use that term lightly) would stop using click bait, then the amount of users getting duped into clicking on bad links will significantly drop....at least until they find a different avenue of delivering their garbage.

I'm done ranting about this for now.  Just pay attention to what you click on.  You may think it can't hurt, but in reality, everything can hurt you on the internet.

I'm OUT!