By Mary Schwager for GalTime.com
What kind of person takes advantage of a royal occasion to bilk people out of money? Scammers, of course! Be careful where you click when you see a tantalizing website luring you into seeing new pictures of the latest addition to the British Monarchy, which many of you, admit it, can't resist! The Better Business Bureau is out with a warning that it expects cons will start to cash in on the newborn prince's popularity. It has seen this type of thing before.
According to the BBB, here's how it works:
- You are on a social media site and you see that your friend likes an "exclusive" video of the new royal baby. The link promises candid footage that no media outlet has, so of course, you click on the link.
The BBB says: Don't automatically trust something on a friend's page or an invitation supposedly from friends. It might not even be them "liking" or sharing scam links to photos. Their account may have been hacked. It may also be clickjacking, a technique that scammers use to trick you into clicking something that you wouldn't otherwise (especially the Facebook "Like" button).
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- Don't take the bait. Just stay away from promotions of "exclusive," "shocking" or "sensational" footage. If it sounds too outlandish to be true, the BBB says it is probably a scam.
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Mary Schwager, AKA Galtime's "WatchDog Mary" is a journalist with more than 17 years experience. She's won more than two-dozen local, regional, national and international journalism awards for investigative, consumer, feature reporting and writing including 11 Emmy Awards and 7 Edward R. Murrow Awards and numerous Associated Press honors. Do you have something you want Mary to check out? Do you have a story idea? Please email her at maryschwager@galtime.com You can also follow her on Twitter @WatchDogMary and "like" her on Facebook.