This one's new to me.
A relative passed away recently. As soon as the obituary was published (probably on the funeral home web site, possibly in the newspapers as well) the first site which came up when searching the decease's name was a scam site.
I won't help them by posting a link, but the web address is echo, no space, vita, dot com.
They give the appearance of being an "officially sanctioned" obituary or memorial page. They stole large parts of the obit, but left out a lot and got some information wrong.
They also injected a sentence or two of their own, encouraging visitors to "subscribe" (give personal information), to buy things from them, order flowers from them and leave comments at their site. Of course, the family will never see these comments. They never even heard of the site, and won't be going there to check.
When you type the first 8 characters of their address into a Google search, the second suggested search phrase is that name followed by "scam."
Doing a bit of searching I found there was a similar site, "Afterlife," which was shut down after losing a $20 million lawsuit for doing the exact same thing.
Seems like a profitable scam. Con people into buying things and leaving comments, then sell their contact information to who-knows-whom.
We're planning to have someone watch the family home at the address mentioned in the obit during the service. I can only imagine what kind of scumbag crooks these people share information with.
A relative passed away recently. As soon as the obituary was published (probably on the funeral home web site, possibly in the newspapers as well) the first site which came up when searching the decease's name was a scam site.
I won't help them by posting a link, but the web address is echo, no space, vita, dot com.
They give the appearance of being an "officially sanctioned" obituary or memorial page. They stole large parts of the obit, but left out a lot and got some information wrong.
They also injected a sentence or two of their own, encouraging visitors to "subscribe" (give personal information), to buy things from them, order flowers from them and leave comments at their site. Of course, the family will never see these comments. They never even heard of the site, and won't be going there to check.
When you type the first 8 characters of their address into a Google search, the second suggested search phrase is that name followed by "scam."
Doing a bit of searching I found there was a similar site, "Afterlife," which was shut down after losing a $20 million lawsuit for doing the exact same thing.
Seems like a profitable scam. Con people into buying things and leaving comments, then sell their contact information to who-knows-whom.
We're planning to have someone watch the family home at the address mentioned in the obit during the service. I can only imagine what kind of scumbag crooks these people share information with.
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