Viral Video: Shark Eats a Man - A Spam Happening in Your Facebook Timeline

There's a latest spam in Facebook and maybe you have observed it in your friend's timeline and instantly you might also become an agent for the post to become viral.

The post is eye-catching because there's an image of a man being eaten by a shark. Also, the title has gravity in it - "[Shocking Video] Shark eats a man swimming in the ocean!!" Plus, it really looked like a video embedded in a post.


Check the image below.

Once you click the post, the viral programming starts. The purpose of this post is to generate leads from the products it promotes.

What will happen next if you click the link of the said viral video of a shark that eats a man?

First, you will be redirected to this page.

And you get excited now because the play button is a click away. But as you click the play button, there's a pop-up that says: "Restricted Video: To start the video, please share it below."

Of course, you are going to hit the share button. And here's my observation about the share stats on the share button which says "60k" from the actual share count. The purpose of the perpetrator is to attract more people to click the share button. As of time of writing this post, the actual share count is 3,639.

I tried to click the share button to see what will happen next. [Note: After i click the share button, I deleted the post in my timeline - maybe my friends who are online during that time may also share the post as they see me sharing it]. But my purpose is to educate people about this spammy things happening in Facebook.

After I clicked "share link", here's what happened.

As you can observed from the above screen shot, there is a quick age verification test. The questions/steps are as follows:

• What is your Body Age?
• Have your Tarot Cards Read!
• What is your Body Age?
• What animal are you?

As I mouse over on the first link: "What is your Body Age?", here's another pop-up screen.

Then you will answer a series of survey questions. But in the end, you can't view the results unless you are going to input your cellphone number. As a precautionary measure, I did not enter my cellphone number. The questions asked in the survey were just designed to get your demography like - age, sex, location, etc.

Have your tarot cards read! Here's the pop-up screen.

Same as the first question, "What is your Body Age?" but the pop-up screen is different.

For the last question: "What animal are you?", here it is!

I haven't seen the viral video of a shark eating a man. But instead, I was annoyed by the spammy tricks designed by advertisement company. Yes, it's a spammy and annoying trick to lure customers. 

Conclusion:

The link of the shocking video of a shark eating a man is misleading - a complete spam!. 

There are a lot of ad networks which are using this kind of trick - using the social media to do the viral sharing. Next time, if you see links similar to this, don't give your cellphone number or email address. 

I do appreciate the efforts exerted by the programmers in order to generate leads for their advertisement campaign. What really disgust me, is the "false hope" given by such link.

If you already shared the link, delete it from your timeline and help your friends be informed by sharing this post.