Eminem has not been sliced up with a knife on the streets of New York. If you see a post spreading around Facebook claiming otherwise, one that displays a photograph of the rapper’s back crisscrossed with gory knife wounds, don’t believe it. And most definitely don’t click through.
Photo via WebProNews
The post is yet another scam that begins with lurid celebrity news and ends in voyeuristic Facebook users giving away too much personal information. “Rapper Eminem left nearly DEAD after being stabbed 4 times in NYC!” screams the headline. (Surely you would have heard about this news somewhere other than Facebook, right?)
Clicking through takes you to a video site that kindly requires you to share the link on Facebook before you can even watch it. The video doesn’t exist, of course. Instead, you’re invited take a survey for a chance to win some expensive electronic product, like a flat-screen TV or an iPad. The scammers make money for each survey their Facebook dupes complete.
We’ve this type of thing before, often in the form of phony celebrity sex tapes (Rihanna and Chris Brown, Taylor Swift and Harry Styles). Last year this exact same scam (with the exact same photograph) went viral, albeit starring a different celebrity: A crazy Justin Bieber fan had cut up his idol outside an L.A. nightclub, that post claimed. We won’t judge if you clicked through to watch that video, however. Stanger things have happened to Justin Bieber.
H/T WebProNews | Photo by meeshypants/Flickr
