Donald Trump Arrested Virus Warning-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
A “Donald Trump arrested” virus warning circulating on WhatsApp and Facebook warns that your computer will become infected with a virus if you click on a “Donald Trump Arrested” video.
The Truth:
There haven’t been any credible reports of a virus being spread by why of a “Donald Trump arrested” video circulating Whatsapp and Facebook.
After President-elect Trump’s surprise election, various outlets started carrying clickbait or satirical articles with the theme of Trump being arrested for anything from espionage to corruption.
A Huffington Post article posted under the site’s “satirical” section misled some readers into believing that Trump had been arrested. Rest assured, Trump has not been arrested.
The Donald Trump arrested virus warnings on Facebook and WhatAapp seemed to have grown from widespread interest in these clickbait and satirical reports, but it’s not clear where, exactly, they started.
And even though there aren’t any confirmed reports of a virus being spread by way of a Donald Trump arrest video, there are real malware threats on the platform, PC Advisor reports:
The most recent WhatsApp scam to come to our attention hopes to trick the user into opening a legitimate-looking Word, Excel or PDF document attached to a WhatsApp message that will actually download malware to their device that can steal their personal information.
All reports so far originate from India, and apparently use the names of the NDA (National Defence Academy) and NIA (National Investigation Agency) in an attempt to get users to open them, but it won’t take much for the scam to make its way to the UK too. Only last month a similar message did the rounds in the UK that tried to persuade users to download a £100 Sainsbury’s voucher. In reality, the link simply installed cookies or a browser extension on the user’s phone that could be used to serve adverts to them.
The best way to avoid these real threats is to never download an unexpected document attachment, even if it comes from a familiar contact.
With all that said, we couldn’t find anything to confirm warnings that a Donald Trump arrested virus has been circulating on WhatsApp or Facebook.