Steve Jobs iPad Scam

The world lost a legend five days ago. One of my role models, Steve Jobs.

The world has publicly written, tweeted, Facebooked, blogged, vlogged and internally mourned the passing of the former Apple CEO. It’s not only amazing how one man changed the world with one idea but that his passing had lead to such a deep sadness of millions of people.

This has put many in a vulnerable state. I know that may sound out of the ordinary since many of those mourning never met Jobs in the first place. But I can personally attest that I was shocked to my core to find out the fate of my role model. Since then I’ve been reading, watching and listening to anything I can get my hands on about the man. In turn, when I see something about him I am moved and feel compelled to read or view more.

As we all know, what usually peaks during a vulnerable state or time of loss? That’s right ladies and gentlemen… SCAMS.

Introducing the Steve Jobs iPad Scam.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has put out a public warning of scammers that are taking advantage of Jobs’ passing.

“As always, the death of celebrity figures brings scammers out of the woodwork. Within hours of Jobs’ death, scammers started taking advantage of Facebook users. One scam reads: “In memory of Steve, a company is giving out 50 ipads tonight. R.I.P. Steve Jobs” and is followed by a link. There are no free iPads being given out. The link actually takes users to a page to complete online surveys. The link went through the bit.ly service and the company has since shut it down. Unfortunately, thousands of victims clicked on it before then.”

The BBB thinks this is just the beginning of scams trying to make money of off the death of Steve Jobs. As always, be sure to take caution when you find something “too good to be true” or seems questionable on the internet. Many goals in these sort of scams are to increase traffic to websites that contain surveys that the site owner then makes a commission off of. You should also be aware that certain sites could even potentially spread malware onto your computers (especially if you don’t own one of Jobs’ security savvy devices).

The BBB warns to “be sure to limit your link-clicking to reputable websites that don’t claim they will give you something for free. Delete any emails that may seem too-good-to-be true” – Source.

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If you have been scammed and would like to file a scam report, please click here.