Enough to get sucked into Facebook scams that as good as promise you one for free the moment they're available?
Of course not!
Naked Security readers are made of tougher stuff!
But what about all the other people you know â€" how do you convince them not to join in the Like Me/Share Me fests that happen whenever a hot new product is imminent?
After all, the argument goes, no-one really loses if all you're doing is Liking or Sharing something in return for a 1-in-1,000,000 chance of winning.
Even if it ends up being a 0-in-1,000,000 chance because it's all a pile of garbage, it's not hurting anyone, so it's worth taking part anyway.
Right?
Wrong.
If nothing else, you're setting a bad example to your online friends, because you're teaching them that: randomly clicking things is OK; that Liking things before you know what they stand for is reasonable behaviour; that passing on dodgy advice is acceptable; and that scams are "mostly harmless."
An iPhone scam deconstructed
So, let's look at a sample iPhone 6 scam that was pointed out to us by a reader.
She thinks that scams are not mostly harmless, so we thought we'd look for a clean, clear and compelling way to convince our friends, "That's a lie. Don't get involved."
All you need to know is how to do multiplication and subtraction.
Here's the scam page:
And here's what you have to do to get your free iPhone 6:
Like! Share! And win.
The page claims that you have a 99.9% chance to win. (In other words, only 1 in 1000 people won't win.)
28,807 people have liked the page already, so that's 99.9% x 27,554 = 28,778 winners so far.
But the page also says there are only 500 iPhones to give away.
So, already at least 28,778 - 500 = 28,278 people are going to be disappointed and find they've been lied to.
Now ask yourself, "If the scammers are already openly stating that they have lied to more than 28,000 of their fans...
...what's the chance that they'll go the whole 99.9 yards, and lie to everyone?"
Let's call it 100% likely, shall we?
Don't be like the users in the tongue-in-cheek video [1] we made for Sysadmin Day, and don't help out Facebook scammers AT ALL:
(Check out more videos on our YouTube channel [2] .)
You're not getting a "free" iPhone 6, and that's that.
So, don't try, don't buy, don't reply.
Image of padlock [4] courtesy of Shutterstock [5] .
Links
- ^ tongue-in-cheek video (www.youtube.com)
- ^ Link to SophosLabs YouTube channel (www.youtube.com)
- ^ Follow @duckblog ('http)
^ padlock (www.shutterstock.com) - ^ Shutterstock (www.shutterstock.com)
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