Even though that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, it seems a substantial number of visitors were taken in by the scam.
Scammers have managed to swindle $69,000 from victims after creating a fake version of Apple’s website.
The bogus page was set up to try and catch the attention of those hoping to tune in to the launch event for the new iPhone 13.
Although a video was on the page, it wouldn’t have been the stream they were looking for — instead, old interviews of Apple’s CEO Tim Cook were being played.
Inevitably, there was also a claim that Apple was advertising a Bitcoin giveaway. The terms bore all the hallmarks of similar scams: Send anywhere between 0.1 and 20 BTC to this address, and twice as much will be sent back to you.
Even though that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, it seems a substantial number of visitors were taken in by the scam.
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An Ongoing Issue
Such scams often attempt to prey on those who may have little technical knowhow and don’t know how to spot warning signs.
Over recent years, a number of these scams have proliferated on YouTube.
Worse still, there have been incidents where genuine YouTube channels have been hijacked, with the hackers deleting old videos and replacing them with content that promotes their crypto addresses.
The video-sharing site has faced lawsuits in the past amid allegations that it has failed to deal with such scams quickly enough.
Back in March, Ripple announced that it had agreed a settlement with YouTube over a spate of XRP giveaway scams — and said both parties would now work together to prevent, detect and take down such material.
