Internet Scammers Targeting Kids

People that prey on kids make me sick. I'm not just talking about the worst predators that would physically hurt or molest children. Internet scammers that target kids are evil too.

This morning my eye caught an ad on a website asking "Which celebrity are you? Come take our quiz." We've done fun stuff like this before for the Speculist, so I clicked through to "www.whichcelebrityami.com."

It's a well put together website. It asks you if you're male or female, if you like to sing or act, and what you like to do in your spare time. The possible answers to the spare time quesion were mildly funny - "wear a disguise to everyday activities, start a charity, adopt an orphan abroad, party around the world."

Then it asks your name and cell number. What? Read the fine print and you're signing up for a cell text service for $5.99/week.

I probably wouldn't have written about this except for the next thing that happened. Instead of killing the window I hit the page back button. I got the following Windows alert box:

IMPORTANT: A friend you recently added on MySpace has a crush on you. Find out now! Select your gender to begin!
That's interesting... since I don't have a MySpace page. I hit the "X" to make that go away and I got another alert:

Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?
PRESS 'CANCEL' BELOW TO FIND OUT WHICH OF YOUR FRIENDS HAS A CRUSH ON YOU...

Press OK to continue, or Cancel to stay on the current page.

Here's a screen capture of this scam. By the way, pressing "Cancel" does not keep you on the current page, it takes you to another scam site "www.my1purelove.com."

Finally, I killed all my browser windows and ran Ad-aware. It found "16 New Critical Objects" in the browser cache.

These people are obviously targeting kids. And I was struck by how stealthy this "offer" was being made. Just finishing the quiz signs you up for this "service." You don't have to give out your credit card to be scammed. Warn your kids.