Spam – “Latest Video: Roller Coaster Cars Collide in Alton Towers” Links
Links are spreading across social media that claim to show a video of the moment two rollercoaster cars collided at the Alton Towers theme park.
However the links are directing users to spammy surveys and questionnaires aimed at harvesting the personal information of visitors, who are then targeted with unsolicited communication.
Links like the one below are spreading across Facebook.
You will never sit on another roller coaster after watching this accident video.
The links are in response to a recent non-fatal accident at the popular UK Alton Towers theme park where 4 people were seriously injured after two cars collided on the Smiler attraction.
Scammers often exploit popular news stories like this in order to lure visitors to spammy websites, and this is what is occurring in this case.
In this example it is a very run-of-the-mill survey scam, where Facebook users are enticed with links purporting to show a video. After clicking the link they see on Facebook, they are instructed to share the same link from their own Facebook account and then complete a series of spammy questionnaires.
Once this has all been completed, more often than not, the user then finds out that there is no video at the end of the trail after all (or the video didn’t match the original description) and that they have been duped. But by this time it is too late to do anything about it.
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There have been no videos released that show the accident in Alton Towers as it happened, as far as we’re aware.
Remember, never share webpages or complete surveys or jump through any of these kind of hoops for the purpose of watching a video. This is how survey scams work, and you’ll end up spamming your friends as well as becoming the target of spam yourself.
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