A video claiming to reveal the discovery of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been revealed as a viral marketing scam.
Entitled ‘Newest Video: Malaysian Air Flight MH370 Found By Sailor Moments Ago’, the link is circulating on Facebook, along with the subhead “Mystery is solved – sailor rewarded $5 million on spot.”
It features a photo of a partially submerged aircraft and invites viewers to click a link, whereupon they are taken to a fake Facebook page instructing you to share it with your Facebook friends before you can watch it.
Scam watchdog Hoax Slayer has branded the message a viral marketing scam
You can’t – what follows is a seemingly never-ending stream of irritating marketing surveys.
What's more, the image used is actually a shot of US Airways Flight 1549, which crashed into New York’s Hudson River in January 2009.
Hoax Slayer writes: “Alas, no matter how many surveys you complete, you will never get to see the promised video, which never existed to begin with."
It expands to say the scammers behind these fake video posts earn money via dodgy affiliate marketing schemes each time a user participates in a survey.
It adds some of the ‘survey’ pages ask for a mobile phone number – which subscribes you to a very expensive text messaging service.
So yeah, don’t click that shiz.
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MH370 'Crew Were Unresponsive & Plane Was On Autopilot When It Crashed Into The Indian Ocean'
The plane and its 239 passengers vanished almost four months ago en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.
The Boeing 777 is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, but not a single piece of debris has been identified in an extensive search involving more than a dozen countries.
Family members of passengers are seeking to raise $5 million for a reward and private investigation leading to discovery of what happened to the missing jet, in the hope whistleblowers will come forward.