A brave soul ventured into the unknown and came back with a report. She became a fan of one of the many free iPad phishing pages. It appears that the phishers are trying to perfect their presentation. The screenshots look nicer than the original and I think I remember reading somewhere yesterday that they started hosting the images on a domain they recently purchased (recently, as in the day before) instead of imgur.com.

Step 1 is to become a fan and Step 2 and 3 will be revealed to you after you become a fan. I did not go past Step 1 but ClappingTree did, so here it is:

Step 2. As part of the registration process you have to invite all your friends! Don’t forget to include a little snippet of Javascript when you tell them about the page because we all know that Javascript is important for letting your friends know about an offer. I do not get Facebook in China so I cannot look at the script. I wonder what it is. Does anyone want to share?

A quick Google search reveals a little “important” note from the “company.”

IMPORTANT: We track how many friends you invited in step 2.
- iPad Research Program – Test It and Keep It! Facebook page

I am going to take a guess that they promised that inviting more friends will increase your chances of being chosen for becoming an iPad tester. Just a guess. Maybe they told the users that the Javascript snippet was to keep track of how many friends they invite.

After completing Step 2, you can move onto Step 3.

Step 3. Uh-oh.

Sorry, this offer is unavailable in your country. You are now being redirected to a similar offer that is available in your country.

She was sent to a page with smiley icons. Explain to me how smiley icons equals a similar offer to free iPads. It was probably those websites you get in pop-up advertisements for free emoticon downloads that are actually *.exe files that claim to install it onto your system for you but really is a trojan or something similar.

It may seem harmless to supply your e-mail address to phishers but they are the tip of the iceberg. They sell your information as cold contacts to cyber scammers and you get flooded with fake product offers for Viagara, Vicodin, designer watches or “security alerts” from your bank requesting you to “confirm” confidential information. You are the perfect target, you already fell for it once and they are expecting you to fall for it again.

ClappingTree.com: “iPad Research – Test and Keep” scam?
Computer Crime Research Center: “How cybercrime operations work – and why they make money”

Part 1. iPad Research Center – Test & Keep It, really?
Part 2. iPad Research Center – Test & Keep It reacts?
Part 3. iPad Research Center – Test & Keep It: The Sequel
Part 4. iPad Research Center, Steps 2 and 3

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