Warning out vs 'Lady Gaga is Dead' Facebook scam

Less than a month after her website was hacked, singer-composer Lady Gaga (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) is now at the center of another online scam. The new scam is making the rounds on Facebook, claiming the popular artist was found dead in a hotel room, computer security firm Sophos reported. "If you are tricked into clicking on the link you are taken ultimately (via a website which sloppily allows an open redirect) to a webpage that pretends to contain a BBC News video report," senior technology consultant Graham Cluley said in a blog post. He said the scam is spreading virally on Facebook, posing as a link to a BBC TV News report. Worse, another computer security firm, Trend Micro, said that the scam may be able to bypass Secure HTTP (https) protocols. "During our analysis, we have also noted that this Facebook spam does not prompt a warning message for the site redirection, therefore bypassing the SSL/HTTPS feature of Facebook even if it is enabled," it said. Sophos' Cluley said that once the user tries to play the video, the scam attempts to silently say the victim "Likes" the page when the victim clicks with the mouse. But Cluley noted users who have installed a browser add-on such a NoScript for Firefox will see a message warning them of the peril of being clickjacked. "If you've been hit by a scam like this, remove the messages and likes from your Facebook page - and warn your friends not to click on the offending links," he said. "Clearly there's much more work which needs to be done by Facebook to prevent these sorts of messages spreading so rapidly," he added. Only last July, a hackers' group broke into Lady Gaga's United Kingdom website and stole her fans' data from the site. Swag Security, the group that also attacked the site of singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, posted an expletive-laced statement against the artist after the hack. — TJD, GMA News