Scam: Fake Steve Jobs Charitable Foundation


If you received an email from "Steve Jobs Charitable Foundation", it is a scam. The email, written in poor English, asked for donation to help young webcoders. There is no such "charity".

Other scams in the past 2 - 3 weeks after his death includes a advertisement about giving away free iPads in memory of Steve Jobs. However, if you click on the link then you'll be asked to fill in online surveys to qualify for one of the free iPads. The objective of the scam is to exploit the event to drive traffic to the website.

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"Unfortunately, as soon as we learned of Steve Jobs' death, we knew scammers would start to figure out how to exploit it," said Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs. "It is not unusual for cyber-crooks and fraudsters to take advantage of headline-grabbing events to spread their creations and affect the maximum number of victims possible in a short period of time."

These scams work by tricking users into visiting websites where they are told they have won a valuable prize, such as an iPad, an iPhone or TV set. Obviously, the unsuspecting victim will never get the prize, but rather a series of costly spam SMS messages. In addition, malicious websites like these leverage geo-location data to display messages in different languages depending on the user's location.

The URL shortening service used in the scam seems to indicate this is the same malicious webpage used in similar attacks around the anticipated launch of the iPhone 5 and the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.





Comments (7)

Said this on 5-3-2012 At 02:30 am
Oh boy! It is like you understand my mind! You seem to know a lot about this, just like you wrote the book in it or sehitmong. I think that you can do with some images to drive the message home a bit, but other than that, this is wonderful blog post. A great read. I'll certainly be back.
Said this on 4-14-2012 At 09:56 am

I don't think that Steve jobs would build a charity asking for any donations. He will be the one who'll donate for sure.

Ray
Said this on 3-13-2012 At 09:24 pm

Ego Steve Jobs and Apple will never donate their hard earned money to charity!!!!!!!!!

IfYouReadThisYourGay>:D
Said this on 2-26-2012 At 11:15 pm

I Never been scammed hahaha >:D sucks to be you! XD

Said this on 1-7-2012 At 05:59 am

Scammers are really making peoples concentration hype by doing such awkward activity. But you did appreciative job by informing readers about fake Steve Jobs charitable foundation. I hope people will be aware. Thanks a lot.

anonymously
Said this on 11-6-2011 At 12:30 pm

I was scammed by a nigerian that use to live in london england. he tried to get me to go for the famous mrs. bashira amir inheritance scam, this happened back in 2007. His name was barrister richard hills. has anyone else received emails from him? he posses as a white british attorney.

anonymous
Said this on 11-9-2011 At 12:40 am

Yes this happened to me also from Nigeria 2yrs ago. But i have someone that helped me out to track them down. Contact me. markewesim@gmail.com

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