Thursday, March 30, 2017

SCAM ALERT: "Deadly Crash" Facebook Scam Spreads Virus

A "Deadly Crash" Facebook post played on people's emotions Wednesday night on Facebook in order to try and spread a virus.

On Facebook, you might read about a horrific crash that killed “2 moms, 5 kids” and the “fathers had to be held back from the flames.”

Within the post, it stated that the crash happened on a "freeway" within Schuylkill County. Most people who read the post were tipped off at this point that the story was fake.

The story was posted by a relatively unknown Facebook page (we are not posting it's title because we don't want anyone to visit the page) but by Thursday morning, it had already been shared hundreds of times. Within the comments of the post, people had said their computers reported the site was trying to infect them with a virus.
An internet search shows the same story has been posted multiple times with different counties across the country. All of them have “NEWSROOMS.INFO” or "COUNTYNEWSROOM.INFO" at the bottom of the share text.

We would just like to remind everyone to be cautious on links to stories from pages you may not be familiar with.  Skook News strives on reporting all known facts on stories including other known trusted news sites and agencies below.  We've listed the known local news sites where you can verify if a story is true.  
 - Citizen Standard
 - Any of the Schuylkill County Fire Pages
 - Schuylkill County Police Activity
 - Coal Cracker Kids
Anyone who opened the link should run a virus and/or malware scare on their computer to make sure their machine is not infected.  Mobile phone users should also check their phone for unusual software.