Malaysian Airlines Flight 370: Article that Claims the Missing Boeing 777 Jet Was Found in Bermuda Triangle Is a Perfect April Fool’s Hoax
Because of the doubt lingering in the mind of relatives of passengers and crew of the ill-fated Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 caused by different theories what really happened, it is not surprising that hackers would take advantage of the confusion to make a few bucks.
One example of that is the hoax news they circulate in social media like Facebook and Twitter which claims that the Boeing 777 jet has been found in the Bermuda Triangle. On Monday, this hoax article came out making such a preposterous claim - a perfect April Fool's eve prank for the naive.
When the video clip it promises is clicked, it would only redirect the user to share the video first before being allowed to view it. Then the user is asked to complete a survey before continuing, with the links designed to appear like a genuine FB survey that would eventually ask to gain access to the user's profile.
CBS, quoting Chris Boyd, a malware intelligence analyst at Malwarebytes, said the scam originally appeared in Facebook but has spread to Twitter. Blogger Brett Christensen said the photo used to promote the video is actually a Lion Air jet mishap near Bali in April 2013.
Despite FB's claim that it had removed the link, it continues to appear periodically in FB newsfeeds.
Mr Boyd explained that pages like those are scams that ride on major global events such as the missing jet, the 2012 Japan earthquake and tsunami and the 2013 Philippine earthquake to seek donations or serve as search engine positioning.
He said, quoted by the Independent, "Anything involving a potential disaster is big money for the scammers, as there's a split between clickers with a penchant for salacious content and those who simply want to know if a relative is OK, or if there's any more news on a breaking disaster."
In the case of the missing jet, the inclusion of Bermuda Triangle, an area linked with mysterious disappearances, adds to the magnet to click open a video link.
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As for real news about the jet, latest report from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said the orange objects spotted on Sunday by its P-3 Orion plane were fishing equipment, not debris of the plane.
However, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has vowed to go on with the search because "we owe it to the grieving families of the 239 people on do board ... to do whatever we reasonably can do to get to the bottom of this mystery."
