During the recent past, the journalists have discovered one of the most powerful forms of marketing to capture the attention of their audiences. This form of marketing is called as “Click Bait”. In fact, the reputed journalists who live out there in the world don’t try this method, but it has become extremely popular among the spammers.
They are only concerned about the number of views that they get to the news articles published online. In order to get those views, they are willing to do anything. By experiments, they identified that they will be able to get a higher number of views by publishing an article related to the death of a celebrity. As a result, they started coming up with fake articles, which convey information about the deaths of famous celebrities who live out there in the world.
Whenever a person who sees such a deadline, he will get the curiosity to click on the link and figure out more details. Some realize that the article is not true, but most don’t. As a result, they go ahead and share those articles within their networks as well. That’s how the click bait articles become viral on the internet. On the other hand, there are websites which try to state the truth about celebrities’ death, like deadorkicking.com, and fight with any death hoaxes. Dead or Kicking is a website which is dedicated to stating the fact about death of celebrities and stating even if they are dead or still alive.
The news about the death of Rowan Atkinson¸ aka Mr. Bean can be considered as a perfect example to prove the above mentioned fact. During the recent past, we were able to see a lot of fake news articles about the death of Rowan Atkinson. As a result, some people started wondering whether Rowan Atkinson is actually dead or still alive.
When the curious people clicked on the links, they were directed to a fake security page. In this security page, they were asked to dial in a phone number. When you call this number, you will be asked to provide your credit card details. This payment will be taken in order to provide a software fix to you. However, it is actually a virus. As a result, you will be spending your money to download a virus to your computer.
Even though the articles about Rowan Atkinson popped up in the recent past, it is not the first time that such articles circulated on the internet. The same hoax about the death of Rowan Atkinson circulated the internet back in July 2017. Therefore, it is clear that the spammers are trying to use the names of well-known and loved celebrities out there in the world to increase the number of clicks that they get.
They spread such fake news due to several reasons. The main reason out of them is to steal the personal information of people. In addition, they are looking forward to collect money and spread viruses along with the assistance of these fake news articles. Therefore, it is important for the internet users to be aware of this trap and take appropriate steps to make sure that they don’t become a victim of it.
There are some useful tips, which people can follow in order to detect fake news that circulate on the internet. All people are strongly encouraged to have a clear understanding about these tips. Then they will be able to take necessary measures to make sure that they don’t become victims of any scams in the long run.
As the first thing, you need to go ahead and verify the credibility of the publisher. Usually, the spammers don’t post fake news from the websites of reputed news agencies. In other words, you will never be able to see the hoax celebrity death articles in the reputed websites such as BBC and Fox News. The spammers tend to create their own websites in order to spread the spam news. These fake websites can also provide them an excellent assistance to grab the sensitive information of people with minimum hassle. However, they tend to purchase domains and use names for the spam websites, which look almost similar to the popular news websites. Therefore, you should carefully examine the website and make sure that it is not a reputed one. Then you will be able to avoid the scams. Another way to avoid fake news is checking reliable websites which are dedicated to a specific topic. For example, here is a page for Rowan Atkinson on Dead or Kicking which clearly is saying that he’s still alive.
Whenever you see a hoax article about the death of a celebrity, you shouldn’t believe it. You need to keep in mind that spammers have been following this technique for quite some time. If you panic and click on the link, you will eventually become one of their victims. Therefore, you are encouraged to go ahead and look for the same piece of information in the website of a reputed news agency. If you can see the same news, the details are true. But if you cannot see the same news, you need to keep in mind that you are about to become the victim of a scam. Hence, it is better if you can keep your hands away from it.
When you are going through a hoax celebrity death article published by a spammer, you will be able to notice a lot of issues. For example, you can easily spot a large number of spelling and grammar mistakes. That’s because these articles are not written by professional journalists. The spammers come up with these fake articles on their own, just because they are interested in increasing the number of clicks that they get. Therefore, you will be able to identify the credibility of the article by going through it. Then you can easily determine whether you should click on the links found in the article or not.
The spammers would keep on coming up with such hoax articles about celebrities in the future. That’s because a lot of people still become victims of these spams. Therefore, you need to be intelligent and play safe, so that you can make sure that you are not becoming a victim of those spams.
