Facebook is bad enough with all its dodgy privacy-busting shenanigans, but we’ve just uncovered something that is particularly distasteful – and we thought we’d best warn you NOT to click on a link if you see it.
Appearing in the ‘sponsored posts’ section on our Facebook page was a photo of British actor Hugh Laurie with the text:
Hugh Laurie Dies. news–eventx.com. Hugh Laurie, 57, takes own life. He was a multi-talented English actor and performer known…
Clicking on to this link takes you to a fake Facebook page with a voiceover claiming that your computer has been infected and that you must call a number, which has been flagged up as a scam since March 2017.
It goes on to say that “If you close this number before calling, we will be forced to disable your computer.”
Obviously this is a complete load of bollocks, but it’s depressing to see Facebook not bothering to check their advertisers and facilitating these kind of scams.
More annoyingly, there is no obvious way to report this scam, so we suspect that many people may have been duped already. We don’t expect Mr Laurie is particularly pleased too.
Update:
It seems that there’s no stopping these things. We’ve just seen another, this time claiming that Jonathon Ross and Graham Norton have both died. These scammers really are sick bastards.
