Curiosity killed the cat, but for we humans, it can too often lead to identity theft, which although certainly not as bad as death, can be pretty devastating.  The latest scam appealing to our curiosity is now appearing on Facebook pages where you will find an announcement about a breaking news story regarding a secret sex tape of Miley Cyrus.  If you click on the link in order to view the tape, a request for you to prove that you are over 18 appears.  When you fill in the information requested, it can not only lead to your identity theft, but can also allow the identity thief to steal your Facebook information so that Facebook messages from the scammer/identity thief will appear to be coming from you which will make your friends more likely to trust the message and end up becoming victims of identity theft themselves.  By the way, there is no such sex tape.

TIPS

Never trust links provided by anyone on your Facebook page or anywhere else without checking out their validity first.  Links luring you with promises of sex tapes of Miley Cyrus or nude pictures of princess Kate Middleton, the wife of Prince William (which do actually exist) or anything else that would tempt you to click on the link are an effective way for identity thieves and scammers to trick you into downloading viruses or keystroke logging malware that can steal all of the information from your computer and make you a victim of identity theft.  If you want to check out the veracity of a gossip, a safe place to go is www.tmz.com.  And of course, as I always say, “trust me, you can’t trust anyone;”  even if you receive an email, text or Facebook message from someone you trust, you can’t be sure that either they have been hacked and the message is coming from a scammer or they are inadvertently passing on tainted links that they don’t realize contains a virus.