back to article Facebook scammers exploit Steve Jobs' death

Facebook scammers have wasted little time in exploiting news of the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs as a theme for survey scams. The conmen's marks are told that an unnamed firm is giving away 50 iPads in memory of Cupertino's billionaire gadget baron. Applicants are invited to complete an online survey to "qualify" for the …

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  1. The Fuzzy Wotnot
    Facepalm

    See icon!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    shouldn't that read

    exploit peoples greed?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      EXACTLY!

      It's much much harder to scam an honest man. The scammers use your greed and lack of honesty as weapons against you.

  3. Elmer Phud

    several born every minute

    "unnamed firm is giving away 50 iPads in memory of Cupertino's billionaire gadget baron. Applicants are invited to complete an online survey to "qualify" for the fondleslab prize."

    Impressively quick.

    Facebook is more awash with the standard post-Jobs jokes - as expected.

    and it was only when I visited the Reg that a post-Jobs joke began to make itself known --

    It wasn't me that coined the term 'fondleslab' . . .

  4. deains
    Meh

    Scammers using method X exploit current event Y

    They'll try anything these days. To quote a classic, there's one born every minute…

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A simple variation of the standard 419 scam email isn't it.

    Dear X

    I greet you in the name of god. I am (Insert plausible Name) the nephew/ cousin/ wife/ lawyer of (insert name) of recently deceased famous person. He left (insert big number) (spell big number on capitals) on trust in (insert name of bank -better if far far away).

    We picked your email address out of the trillions in existence as we value your close personal friendship with (insert another name). Therefore we propose to allocate you (nice big thing or amount) but we need (a large number of currency) to pay the release tax on this amount from (insert name of bank again).

    yours in god and trusting you to keep this transaction secret

    (plausible name again) .

    Often Mr Plausible claims to either be a Barrister or oddly enough maybe thats his first name.

    I'm sure there must be enough drooling baboons to make this kind of insult to the intelligence pay off. But you'd think they run out of them one day wouldn't you?

    I always say that if these 'lads from *****' or elsewhere in ******* spent just 10% of their energies in honest endeavour instead they would probably be running the planet by now.

  6. LarsG

    IF AN OFFER IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

    IT USUALLY IS.

    1. Steven Roper
      Thumb Up

      The way I generally put that

      is "If an offer seems too good to be true - it IS." Or you can substitute "usually" with "always".

  7. nyelvmark
    WTF?

    unscrupulous marketing firms

    Is there another kind?

    1. C 18
      Joke

      Yes, but due to their non-industry standard marketing strategies you haven't heard of them nor are you ever likely to.

  8. Winkypop Silver badge
    Alert

    P. T. Barnum, was right

    He would have loved facebook.

  9. neek
    Unhappy

    I'd buy that for a dollar!

    "premium-rate text messaging services of dubious value (eg, daily horoscopes)"

    Sadly, many people really would buy that for a dollar, and consider themselves getting service of value.

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