Prepare For Massive Wave of Earthquake Scams 158
wiredmikey sends this quote from Security Week:
"Today's tragic events of the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami, as sad as it is, is a dream for scammers and fraudsters around the world. Tragic events are always something scammers use to their advantage, helping them prey on and exploit innocent victims. Scams are already spreading across Facebook, which started in a matter of minutes after the news broke of the earthquake in Japan. As I write this, scammers are hard at work, registering new domains and cranking out templates for their fake donation sites. This will be followed with massive volumes of email spam, Tweets through Twitter, and Facebook posts, as scammers gear up to solicit donations from around the world."
As coverage of the earthquake and resulting tsunami has proceeded, collections of videos and pictures are showing the extent of the devastation. The NY Times makes the excellent point that things could have been much worse if not for building codes and quake-resistant engineering. A state of emergency was declared at one of Japan's nuclear plants, after the earthquake caused cooling problems at one of the reactors. No radiation leakage has been reported, and the US Air Force has helped by delivering coolant by air.
Re:Disgusting (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously.
Scamming is nasty business at the best of times, but (imagining I were a scammer) I could see people in places like Nigeria justifying it to themselves as getting their share from the rich west.
But this is just out and out profiting from human misery and death.
It didn't help last time. (Score:4, Insightful)
Listen, people are idiots and fools are easily parted with their money. More, people have a short attention span and never follow up on the results.
People were suckered into the whole Haiti thing last year. Morons "texting" cash to charities and schiesters like Bill Clinton and George Bush encouraging people to "just send us your cash". And in the end? No accountability. I don't even need to go into the troubles with the Red Cross and the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars, can't seem to account for where all that money went to. Last I recall, Clinton was present to see the handing over of three million bucks or some similarly ridiculously low number.
You had global donations from governments promised in the billions (at least five billion, I believe). You had moron celebrities holding telethons and telling you that you should give your cash.
And idiots gave their cash. But they never looked in on what was going on. Why should they? I texted my $10 to some place, so I'm a good person now! I don't need to figure out whatever happened after that!
Meanwhile, it's a year later and we're told that people are still living in tents and everyone is dying of dysentery or whatever.
Of course, Japan is less likely to be prone to this kind of problem, I think. The only concern there will be with fake charities trying to scam you out of donations through fake websites and other services. And that's what this article was talking about, to begin with. The problem in Haiti was different, in that they're not the power that is Japan. They're fucking Haiti. And actual real organizations simply behaved criminally after extorting donations from you.
Re:Disgusting (Score:5, Insightful)