The internet is full of scammers and pirates looking to exploit people, get money from them, or cause them grief for not paying up.

Here at WBON-TV9, we want to alert everyone to repeated postings we, and many other news outlets get.

These posts always appear in the comments, and have some exciting headline like “police captured the incident on video,” or “Eyewitness video of the accident,” etc. When you click on these posts however, what you get is malware, ransomware, or other disrupting viruses downloading to your device.

To date, WBON has deleted and blocked thousands of these type scammers, but they keep coming. Even though many recognize these posts for what they are, we still are shocked by how many people still fall for them and take the ‘click bait.”

They make their posts under breaking news stories, during live sporting broadcasts, and anything that is garnering a large audience online. Many times, they post in a reply to someone, so to not be immediately detected by one of our admins. We are very vigilant to remove and block these spammers, but sometimes sadly not before they get someone to take the bait.

We wanted to share some features of these type posts so that it may help more people be aware of what to look for.

*Most of the posts are made from someone in a foreign county, with a foreign name, as in the example.

*Most of the posts look similar, with similar verbiage.

*Sometimes, the posts are not in very good English (as with the example)

*WBON posts will always be identifiable and distinguishable by our call signs or website

*Most of all, if you are not 100% certain of the source, NEVER click a strange or unfamiliar link.

We thank all our viewers and readers who alert us when such posts appear on our content and hope you will continue to help us police our socials for scammers.