Security experts are warning curious netizens not to fall for a new social media spam campaign claiming to reveal the ‘10 Hottest Snapchats’.
Romanian security vendor Bitdefender says it has blacklisted dozens of sites already which claim to reveal the salacious Snapchat content and other leaks.
Tags to promote the content include ‘TrendingUSA’, ‘ViralTruck’, ‘ViralDips’, and ‘FunChoke’ – with one site apparently accruing 75,000 Facebook likes and 4771 Twitter followers.
The Hottest Snapchats scam has over the past week risen to become the second most popular of its kind on Facebook, after the ‘check your top profile visitors’ campaign, Bitdefender claimed.
“Fraudulent websites promoting Snapchat leaks and other ‘viral’ content could lead to identity fraud and financial losses,” said the firm’s chief security strategist, Catalin Cosoi, in a statement.
“Victims are usually subscribed to money-making surveys and redirected to scams promising electronics or amazing diet pills. Bitdefender advises users to be suspicious of videos, Snapchats and pictures ‘leaked’ online, particularly on Facebook.”
The promise of nude celebs and other titillating content is nothing new on the social network.
Scammers have frequently used such bait to lure unsuspecting users to malicious sites. One of the more famous of these was the leaked Emma Watson video scam which surfaced last year, spreading trojan malware.
Bitdefender warned at the end of last year that such spam campaigns are likely to continue into 2015.
A two-year analysis of over 850,000 of these scams by the security firm revealed that ‘guess who viewed your profile’ (45.5%) was the most popular, followed by ‘functionality scams’ claiming to offer elements that don’t even exist, such as ‘dislike’ buttons and different timeline color schemes.
Third was bogus giveaways like free Disneyland tickets, accounting for 16.5%.
Videos and links purporting to show celebrity sex tapes and so-called 'atrocity videos' comprised 7.5% of the scams.