Warning out vs Hurricane Irene Facebook scam

Barely have residents in New York recovered from the effects of Hurricane Irene when a new online threat exploiting their situation started circulating online. Computer security firm Trend Micro said cybercriminals are taking advantage of the incident by spamming via a fake video on social networking site Facebook. "The text displayed in the succeeding pages (after the main page) is in Italian, which suggests that the attack specifically targets Italian users. Clicking the image of the video displays a prompt that says 'Per Vedere il video devi prima condividere' which translates to 'To see the video you must first share', as well as two options that say 'Share' and 'See the video,'" Trend Micro said in a blog post. It said the scam attempts to hook potential victims with the title “VIDEO SHOCK – Hurricane Irene New York kills All," on a clickable image of a fake video player. Clicking “Share" displays the link to the Facebook on the user’s wall. Users who click on the “See the video" link will see a list of deals that the user must register to, just to view the video. "The said deals only lead to advertisement and affiliate program websites," Trend Micro said. According to Trend Micro, such schemes in Facebook have been rampant in the past weeks. "We’ve seen these attacks use various social engineering lures, such as false news about the death of of singer Lady Gaga, tickets for the Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn, and invites for Google+," it said. — TJD, GMA News