A Facebook scam being spread around is saying former Formula One champion Michael Schumacher has died after coming out of a coma is fake.
The scam post, which includes a photo of Schumacher skiing with a play button over it, reads: “F1 Star Michael Schumacher dead after come out from COMA few seconds ago. Miss you champ!”
Schumacher, 45, came out a six-month-long coma last week, but he’s most assuredly still alive. He was moved from a French hospital to another location for treatment.
When one clicks on the Facebook post, they’re taken to a website designed to look like Facebook. Before going further, the website asks users to share it first.
After that, they’re presented with bogus surveys. Users should not fill out the surveys because they will bombard them with spam or worse.
The surveys are how the scammers behind the website make money.
“You might think that it’s just a case of clicking on the video thumbnail to watch a news report of Michael Schumacher’s death, but you would be wrong,” reads a post from WeLiveSecurity.com, a security blog. “Because if you do click onwards, you are told that you need to share the link with your Facebook friends to watch the video.”
The website adds: “The truth is that cold-hearted scammers are trying to drive traffic to the webpage, because if you do share it with your friends you are helping them generate traffic to their site. And the more people who attempt to watch the video, the more money they will make.”
Scammers are constantly trying to get Facebook users to bogus websites to spread surveys, malware, phishing attacks, and rogue apps.
“If you are asked to share, ‘like’, complete surveys in order to view a video, picture or other content, is the first sign that you are being tricked or scammed. You do not need to do any of these things in order to view any content on Facebook and the rest of the internet,” reads a post from security website Online Threat Alerts about the Schumacher post and similar scams.
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