Thousands of images are pouring out of Sochi in the lead-up to the Olympics. And things don’t look great. There are unfinished buildings, a lack of winter weather, and an abundance of trash. But don’t believe every image you see. Like so much of what gets passed on social media these days, a lot of them aren’t exactly what they claim.
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It’s an astounding sight: Buddha carved into a tall rock formation at the Ngyen Khag Taktsang Monastery in China. People talked breathlessly about how they visited the place, saw it with their own eyes. Except that they didn’t. Because it’s a fake
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Over at The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal has uncovered the two people behind the enormously popular (and often factually inaccurate
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Can you spot the fakes? Hundreds of amazing images wash over our greedy eyeballs each and every day, clogging our Twitter timelines and Facebook feeds. Many of them are fakes, lies, or both. Like these!
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Did Nikola Tesla actually work as a swimming instructor? What’s the deal with that famous photo of Albert Einstein and his therapist? Did they actually make radiation-aged bourbon back in the 1960s? Nope!
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You know that photo of Teddy Roosevelt riding a moose? The one you’ll find on lists like Cracked’s "18 Old-Timey Photos You Won’t Believe Aren’t Photoshopped" and submitted to Imgur about every two weeks as an example of extreme manliness? Well, it turns out it’s a fake.
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Did you hear? Nearly half of Justin Bieber’s Twitter followers are fake. Fake! Belieber nation is a fraud, life has no meaning, the abyss of treachery and betrayal that is life grows deeper by the hour. More »
Counterfeit goods that get found out often get destroyed. That should come as no surprise. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to watch, especially if the fakes are convincing. Take this Russian crush-fest, for example, where a bulldozer demolished 127 iPhones found to be cheap imitations masquerading as the real thing. At least let’s hope they weren’t real. Either way, they look close enough that watching them be crushed into wreckage is still kind of rough, but at the same time you can’t look away. [Bit Rebels] More »
Apple’s new iMac is taking its time to arrive in stores. But if you’re bored of waiting, you can already get a dodgy Chinese fake of the sleek new computer—before anyone has managed to get their hands on the official product. More »
Most Android malware lives in the margins, away from Google Play and the more reliable app shops. It’s nonetheless a good idea to be on the lookout for rogue code, and McAfee has stepped in with thorough explanations of how one of the most common scamware strains, Android.FakeInstaller, works its sinister ways. The bait is typically a search-optimized fake app market or website; the apps themselves not only present a legitimate-looking front but include dynamic code to stymie any reverse engineering. Woe be to anyone who’s tricked long enough to finish the installation, as the malware often sends text messages to expensive premium phone numbers or links target devices to botnets. The safeguard? McAfee would like you to sign up for its antivirus suite, but you can also keep a good head on your shoulders — stick to trustworthy shops and look for dodgy behavior before anything reaches your device.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Google
McAfee shows how major Android scamware ticks, prevents us from learning first-hand originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Oct 2012 06:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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