Acai Berry fake news website operators fined millions of dollars by FTC

Have you seen this online news report about the miraculous Acai Berry diet?

You may have seen it on a site like “News 6 News Alerts,” “Health News Health Alerts,” or “Health 5 Beat Health News”.

Maybe you got to the webpage after clicking on a link shared by a friend on Twitter, who says they have lost a shed load of weight by following the diet?

Of course, the website is a fake (it’s just pretending to be a legitimate news source) and your friend didn’t tweet out that message – their account has been compromised by spammers.

Time and time again, spammers have compromised Twitter accounts, including those belonging to Hyatt Hotels and NHS Direct, exploiting them to spread fake endorsements of using colon cleansers and following an Acai Berry diet to lose weight…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to read more of the exclusive content we post.

Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.