Update
[December 16, 2013 @ 13:30]
ITWorld.com still continues to troll Google News and is luring gullible users to websites that actually don’t have a working iOS 7 jailbreak. Just after we reported our initial story over 10 days back, the Answers section of ITWorld.com was cleaned off and all the links we pointed here stopped working.
However, new listings have started appearing and point to the ITWorld.com answers section again, which has now a password protection in place. Only registered users will be able to access those links.
We tried contacting ITWorld.com last time around, but haven’t received any update and we don’t expect any response from this time as well. We recommend our readers to refrain from such articles / stories / news on the web as they are all fake and you will end up paying for a service that actually doesn’t provide an iOS 7 jailbreak.
Original Story
We recently covered a story describing how iOS 7 jailbreak scammers are resorting to tactics such as fake press releases and promotions to lure gullible users into shelling out as much as $50 for jailbreaks that don’t exist. We have come across another tactic where the scammers have seemingly hijacked ITWorld.com Answers’ section and redirecting users to www.iosjailbreakinfo.com
Navigating to ITWorld.com website, one of the sites in the IDG Network, you will find the Answers section where users can register and ask questions to experts and peer readers. When we navigated to the front page of this section, we found that there were 6 different questions for a user ‘iosjailbreakinfo’ with titles such as
- “Official Factory IMEI Unlocking For iPhone 5S/4S/4/3GS Jailbreak iOS 7.0/6.1.4”;
- “IOS 7 Jailbreak/Unlock Untethered Tutorial – iPhone 5S/4S/4/3GS”;
- “IT’S Hottest Jailbreak iOS 7.0/6.1.4 Unlock iPhone 5S/4S/4/3GS”; and
- “iOS 7 Jailbreak For iPhone 5s,5c,5,4s Just Released! ibtimes Conirms About iDevice Jailbroken”.
Clicking on any of the links doesn’t take you to the normal Q&A section, but actually redirects to www.iosjailbreakinfo.com that claims to be providing jailbreaks for iOS 7 including the iOS 7.0.3 for all iPhone models including the recently release iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C. If you click on “Available to Download Now” it take you to Plimus payment page with a demand for $27 or equivalent in your currency.
One interesting thing to note here is that one the questions reads “iOS 7 Jailbreak For iPhone 5s,5c,5,4s Just Released! ibtimes Conirms About iDevice Jailbroken”. By adding “ibtimes confirms” text, scammers are trying to add a little bit of authenticity to their claims as it has been endorsed by a media company.
As we had reported in our previous report, this site also has line which reads: “We WILL safely jailbreak your ipad or iPhone 2 and itouch, 2g, 3, 3g, 3gs, 4, 4.1, 4.2.1, 4.2, 4.3,4.3.5, 5.0,5.0.1,5.1,5.1.1,6.0,6.0.1,6.1,6.1.2!”
This indicates that the scammer are again not offering any iOS 7 jailbreak, but in fact just trying to fool users. We recommend that our readers stay away from such scams.
We have contacted ITWorld.com demanding a clarification. We will update the story as soon as we hear something back.
@ITworld ITWorld Answers section has been hijacked? Promoting fake iOS 7.0 jailbreak by redirecting to http://t.co/xD28HL2ne7 Please clarify
— Techie News (@techienewsuk) December 5, 2013
You are 100% right with your article! I also reported the itworld website to Google because everytime I hit jailbreak, their website is on top news with fake scams jailbreaks. Spread the word and report them.