{"id":33595,"date":"2014-07-22T11:41:16","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T11:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=33595"},"modified":"2014-07-22T13:18:52","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T13:18:52","slug":"mh17-twitter-and-facebook-spammers-exploit-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2014\/07\/mh17-twitter-and-facebook-spammers-exploit-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"MH17: Twitter and Facebook spammers exploit crash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scammers are using the MH17 disaster in east Ukraine to spread objectionable links, online security experts have warned.<\/p>\n<p>A link to a pornographic website disguised as a video of the Malaysia Airlines crash was posted on a Facebook page dedicated to one victim.<\/p>\n<p>Many tweets have been posted that appeared to report the disaster, but actually included spam links.<\/p>\n<p>One expert said the firms should take more responsibility for removing them.<\/p>\n<p>Online security specialist Richard Cox said that it was common for spammers to exploit anything being discussed by a lot of people online.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is a fairly rapid and predictable response by the individuals behind it. They are all to make money. There is no compassion involved,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Cox, who is also chief information officer for anti-spam body Spamhaus, added that the perpetrators might be using software that could detect what was being posted regularly and repost using the same hashtags.<\/p>\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Liam Sweeney\" src=\"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/76411000\/jpg\/_76411967_liamsweeney.jpg\" width=\"464\" height=\"261\" \/><\/div>\n<div>A Facebook apparently dedicated to Liam Sweeney was set up, hosting spam.<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A Facebook community page dedicated to Liam Sweeney, one of the 298 people victims, uses his name and picture.<\/p>\n<p>Its sole post is a link entitled: &#8220;Video Camera Caught the moment plane MH17 Crash over Ukraine&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>However, the link takes users to a pornographic website. Moreover, anyone who clicks on it is then asked to call a phone number in order to verify that they are aged 18 or older.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Whoever it is now has your caller ID and you could get a lot of nuisance calls,&#8221; said Mr Cox.<\/p>\n<p id=\"story_continues_2\">&#8220;This is all based on a somewhat tasteless video that probably doesn&#8217;t exist and is presented in a completely tasteless way.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He added that Facebook should have deleted the site.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook subsequently did so after it was brought to its attention by the BBC. A spokesman said: &#8220;We are disabling these profiles as soon as we are made aware of them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We encourage people to block those responsible and report suspicious behaviour to our team of experts via our reporting buttons so that we can quickly take the appropriate action.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Twitter abuse<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On Friday 18 July, security firm TrendMicro reported that it had detected tweets pretending to be about MH17, but which also bore spam links.<\/p>\n<p>Rik Ferguson, the firm&#8217;s vice president of security research, said that its research suggested that the pages were most likely being used to gather clicks to generate advertising revenue.<\/p>\n<p>He said the tactic could also be used to force pages higher up search engine rankings.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It looks like a lot of people are retweeting what they are doing,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Twitter&#8217;s rules state: &#8220;User abuse and technical abuse are not tolerated on Twitter.com, and may result in permanent suspension.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Any accounts engaging in the activities specified below may be subject to permanent suspension: If you post multiple unrelated updates to a topic using #, trending or popular topic, or promoted trend.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>TrendMicro said that many previous disasters had been exploited in a similar way and that it expected to see further exploitation of the MH17 crash.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scammers are using the MH17 disaster in east Ukraine to spread objectionable links, online security experts have warned. A link to a pornographic website disguised as a video of the Malaysia Airlines crash was posted on a Facebook page dedicated to one victim. Many tweets have been posted that appeared to report the disaster, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":33597,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[18,1745,1733],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>MH17: Twitter and Facebook spammers exploit crash - Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. 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