Scammers are Continuously Exploiting Fake Death News of Jackie Chan

Cybercriminals are constantly abusing Hollywood's superhero 'Jackie Chan's' fake death news, warn security experts, published inquisitr.com on September 30, 2013.

On the contrary, Chan is not dead and is busy working for a Chinese-theme park, besides, featuring in some action movies like 'Police Story 2013' though he earlier hinted at retirement from showbiz.

Reports of Jackie Chan's hoax death have spread massively on the World Wide Web this year generally claiming that he died while shooting for a stunt scene or after falling from a rooftop.

The superstar (referring to Chan) has himself proved that he is very much alive by releasing a photo of his own self yet people are spreading this hoax news on the Internet. In fact, this fake news is circulating since July 2013.

Chan's death virus propagates with the help of bogus websites and FB (Facebook) accounts. The bogus news 'posts' will connect to external websites that load the victim's computer with a virus. Most will instruct you to 'download' a file so as to watch the news video, an action not usually undertaken by legitimate news websites. Additional hoaxes will try to influence you in such a manner that you have to enter your 'personal' information so they (scammers) can embezzle your identity.

Shocking news has been the preferred way always to distribute malware or to lead Internauts to surveys. Chan's so-called death is just a new deception for cybercriminals to monetize FB traffic, commented Bogdan Botezatu, Senior E-Threat Analyst at Bitdefender, in first week of August 2013, published by softpedia.com.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that a Jackie Chan's death hoax has made it to Internet. In 2011, a Facebook page called "Jackie Chan R.I.P. 08/17/2011" went viral as fans memorialized the action star who was alleged to have died of a heart attack.

Like fake reports about Chan's death, fake news about other known faces have also been exploited to spread malware. Other celebrities and socialites whose names have been exploited in hoax death news include: retired professional footballer Joseph Clifford "Joe" Montana, Jon Bon Jovi, Tom Cruise, Jeff Goldblum, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, and a host of others.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/9/2013