As news breaks about Justin Bieber having his camera and laptop stolen, Internet surfers can brace themselves for the latest onslaught of Bieber-related scams to hit the web.
Q: What is the one absolutely sure thing to happen when Justin Bieber’s laptop and phone gets stolen?
A: Nearly every type of social engineering scammer is going to break down in a fit of hysterics at the prospect of having a field day with notoriously gullible “Beliebers”.
It’s not like Bieber hasn’t caught the attention of Internet scammers already – scams related to the pint sized popstar have been prolific over the last few years because it seems that online criminals and hoaxers understand that typical Bieber followers (i.e. 13 year old girls) tend to be a tad more naive and gullible than many other demographics, and these traits will certainly make them easier online prey.
And now the news is breaking that Bieber’s laptop and camera have been stolen (at least, according to his official Twitter feed, that is) we can all expect Internet scammers to be frantically redesigning and repackaging their tired scams with the brand new lure of asserting to offer the video and image contents of such stolen merchandise.
You see, Internet scams rarely change much. In many cases the only thing that really does change is the bait, and when it comes to claiming you have the contents of Justin Biebers phone and laptop, scammers have struck online gold.
And this has not been helped by Justin twittering that the stolen hardware contained personal footage. Let’s just hope, despite the recent trend in celebdom, that personal footage shouldn’t be used between quotation marks.
So expect scammers to create malware-laced websites – claiming to offer the video contents of Justin’s phone – appearing in Google search engine results.
Expect messages flooding your Facebook and Twitter newsfeeds claiming to show the contents of Justin’s stolen laptop, just as soon as you share a website and complete a survey.
And expect to see websites offering to show you exclusive “personal footage” of Justin just as soon as you “update your video codecs”.
As for whether the person who actually did steal Justin’s laptop and phone will risk being caught by uploading anything to the Internet, well that remains to be seen, and if you do feel compelled to see it, be careful.
