Spammers’ attention has turned to the MH-17 crash in east Ukraine, taking it as an opportunity to post spammy content on social networking sites.
A Facebook page dedicated to Liam Sweeney, one of the victims of the crash, had a link leading to a pornographic website which also prompted visitors to call a number to confirm they are over 18. The post also had a link with the title “Video Camera Caught the moment plane MH17 Crash over Ukraine.”
The page was removed by Facebook shortly after BBC notified the social network about it. Facebook has also encouraged users to block those who post spammy content like this and also report it to the company using the appropriate buttons provided for it.
Twitter also had its share of spammy posts with the hash tags related to the MH-17 crash with totally unrelated links. Several of these tweets pretended to give news about the MH-17 crash but led to websites which were filled with spammy content.
Online security specialist Richard Cox of the anti-spam body Spamhaus said that it is a common practice for spammers to attract traffic to their websites by exploiting such widely discussed news.
He also said that the parties responsible for it might also be using specially designed software which identifies trending stories to repost the same stories with the same hash tags while linking it to the websites which they want users to visit.
Security firm TrendMicro noted that scammers have exploited previous incidents which got much attention and that it expected to see more exploitation of the crash. An expert said that the concerned firms should keep an eye on spamming and remove any pages or posts that include spam links.
TrendMicro Vice President Rik Ferguson said that the company’s research indicated that the pages were used to get clicks which will be translated into ad revenue for the impostors.
