Be Wary of Naked Prince Harry Scams

ByCraig Haley

Whenever the latest celeb tabloid trash story begins to break we always brace ourselves for the inevitable onslaught of social networking scams to capitalise on the story starting to circulate.

This is why we’re particularly wary today considering the latest tabloid frenzy involves naked billiards, smartphones, Las Vegas and an English Prince. It seems naked photos of Prince Harry are circulating the Internet this morning at breakneck speed after he was caught playing an ill-advised game of naked billiards with friends in a VIP suite at a Las Vegas Hotel.


Expect to see messages and links about Prince Harry and Las Vegas light up social networking sites

As you can understand, in the trashy tabloid world this story is essentially on par with discovering the solution to world peace, so you can expect to hear a lot about it in the upcoming days. This also means that the story is going to catch the attention of Internet scammers, which means we’re likely going to see some classic scams resurfacing using the Prince Harry photos as bait.

Facebook survey scammers are likely to exploit the story, meaning you may encounter messages on Facebook that claim to show the X-rated photos, but first you have to share a website with your Facebook friends and complete a “survey” before you can see anything. As we explain here, these are just scams designed to harvest your personal information.

You may even encounter messages on social networking sites that claim to show video footage of the naked incident (no footage exists as far as we’re aware, by the way). These messages will link to websites that assert you need to install a video codec, update or plug-in to see the video, but alas this is just a classic malware trap designed to trick victims into downloading harmful files to their computer.


Typical malware scam that claims the user needs to install a Flash update to see the video. This is actually malware.

For those inclined to see the images and the breaking story, here is the original TMZ article. Remember, with these kind of stories you can always see them by visiting websites of tabloid media outlets. You never have to give up your personal information, complete surveys, click on suspicious Facebook links or download files or updates in order to see this kind of content.