Shocking death of mother who fell in bear cage? The truth is it’s another Facebook video scam

There is another scam spreading rapidly across Facebook, this time offering to show a shocking video of a woman being mauled to death by a polar bear.

It’s fairly grisly (if you pardon the pun) to imagine that anyone would want to watch such a thing, but human nature being what it is it appears that many Facebook users are finding it impossible to resist clicking to see more.

fb-bear-1

[RAW FULL VIDEO] Shocking Death Of Mother Who Fell Down into a Bear Cage This Morning

This video is very shocking. Click on the picture to watch this rare uncut death!

[LINK]

The truth is that a woman *did* get attacked after entering a polar bear enclosure. But that was in April 2009, in Germany’s Berlin Zoo. The 32-year-old mother – identified as Mandy K – jumped over a fence, and scaled a wall to reach four polar bears.

Fortunately she was rescued by zoo staff, and survived.

But the message spreading currently on Facebook is a scam, claiming that the accidental has just happened (and with deadly consequences) to encourage ghoulish social networkers into clicking on the link.

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However, if you do click on the link you will find yourself not taken to a genuine news report, or even a YouTube video, but a webpage that claims you need to verify your age by completing some online surveys.

Age verification? No, it's a survey scam

The real YouTube, of course, never asks you to complete surveys to watch a video. What’s happening here is that the scammers are hoping to drive traffic to online questionnaires (which ask an inordinate amount of irritating information over multiple pages) in the hope of earning affiliate cash.

Example survey

You may also find yourself encouraged to reshare the link to the “shocking video” with your Facebook friends and family, thus helping the link spread even further across the social network.

Don’t be duped into clicking on such links – even if it appears your friends have shared with them with you.

Instead, get them clued-up about security threats and don’t make it so easy in future for scammers to earn money on Facebook.

Scams, of course, are a common occurrence on Facebook. Recent examples include a sex video of a reality TV “star”, shocking roller-coaster accident videos, videoed assaults on young women, giant snakes eating zookepers, alleged celebrity deaths, and even ones related to missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

If you are on Facebook, and want to be kept updated with the latest scam alerts, news about security and privacy risks, and tips on how to protect yourself online, join the Graham Cluley Security News Facebook page.


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "Smashing Security" podcast. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

One comment on “Shocking death of mother who fell in bear cage? The truth is it’s another Facebook video scam”

  1. Mike

    Thank you, as a FB Friend recently spammed the timelime 3 times in 2 minutes with that.

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