Facebook and Twitter users are the target of a new scam offering free Apple iPad’s to beta-testers who sign up online.
Scammers have created pages on Facebook claiming that you can be the lucky recipient of an Apple iPad if you simply register to be a beta-tester. Not only will they supply you with an iPad for free, but they’ll also let you keep the iPad at the end of the beta-test. What could go wrong with that?
Hmm, well, as the following YouTube video explains, this is a scam which is using the lure of a free Apple iPad as bait for you to hand over your cellphone details:
The scam works like this:
1) The bad guys create a Facebook page, with a suitably alluring offer (in this case “iPad Researchers Wanted – Want to beta test Apple’s latest product?”). This encourages you to “Become a fan” of the page (which, in itself, helps advertise it to your other friends on Facebook)
2) They then encourage you to invite all your friends to also become fans of the page, via a handy button. They say that this will increase your chances of being accepted for the bogus promotion. Of course, in reality, it increases the number of people who might be taken to the cleaners by the scammers.
3) says you are ready to “Apply”. However, although you are taken to a page which is designed to look like an official form on the Apple website, it is quickly overlaid by a pop-up survey.
In the example above I was asked to take a survey to prove I was a “human”. After answering questions which supposedly would determine if I was more like 50 Cent than Kanye West, I was asked to fill in my contact information – including date of birth and mobile phone number – before I could continue to register for my free iPad.
And that’s where the scam happens. The hackers who created this page are trying to sign you up for a premium rate cellphone service, that will charge you something like $10 a week until you unsubscribe.
Of course, this isn’t an official beta-test at all, and Apple aren’t going to send you an iPad for free. You will need to queue up like everyone else when they are released, and buy one like the rest of us (provided you have pockets big enough).
This scam is also occurring on Twitter.
Read the full report from Sophos here.
