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Fake Funeral Live Stream Scams Are All Over Facebook

404 Media [free reg req’d]: “Facebook is awash with scams that direct visitors to fake live streams of funeral services, preying on relatives and friends of the deceased when they might be at their most vulnerable, 404 Media has found. The scams involve pulling details of real deceased people from legitimate funeral services pages and then making copycat announcements, before pushing victims to a site that asks for their credit card information allegedly in order to watch the funeral of their loved one. The scams cause “panic on the day where you shouldn’t be thinking of that,” the cousin of one recently deceased person, whose name and photo were recently used in a scam, told 404 Media. 404 Media is not publishing his name or that of the deceased relative for privacy reasons. The relative described the scam as “disgusting.” In that specific case, a Facebook account pointed visitors to a tinyurl link. “Please Like,Share Your Family and Friends,” a post on the Facebook account read, next to a photo of the deceased. “You will get the link once the registration is complete.I introduced this rule only for scams.thank you.” That link then went to a website claiming to host a livestream of the deceased’s funeral service, complete with a video player that takes a few seconds to load. “WATCH LIVE NOW,” a button underneath the player reads. On other nearly identical scam sites 404 Media found, clicking such a link directs visitors to enter their credit card information, presumably the point at which the scammers extract value from their unsuspecting victims…”

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