A viral Facebook message claiming there’s a video of a shark eating a “man in an ocean” is really just a scam.
“Shark eats the swimming man in an Ocean !!” it says. “Watch the Video-Heart breaking footage behind the scene !!”
The scam will trick a user in to “liking” and sharing bogus surveys, asking the user if they are at least 18 years old. The perpetrator of the scam gains revenue when people complete the survey.
When a user follows the survey’s instructions, it then shares the Facebook scam. The video says that they have to share the page in order to see the video.
There is no video of a shark eating a man. The image used in the message reportedly appears to be from the movie “Jaws: The Revenge.”
“This scam will trick you into ‘liking’, sharing and completing surveys, which the cybercriminals behind it will benefit from. There is no video, so do not be tricked into completing the surveys, liking or sharing the post. Cybercriminals will use graphic or fake images, which they claim is a video, to trick gullible Facebook users into clicking on, thinking they will be able to view the videos depicted by the images,” reads a posting from Online Threat Alerts.
Similar scams are often spread with posts claiming to be from CNN or Fox News, including fake videos of Jackie Chan’s getting killed in a stunt, a video of the “world’s largest snake,” and others.
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