A dastardly online organisation has taken prank-calling to nefarious highs and is being investigated by the FBI, according to a report by Fox News. PrankNET and its leader, “Dex,” have used untraceable Internet phone calls to impersonate a corporate honcho and make KFC employees spray down their entire restaurant with fire suppressants, evacuate, and strip bare in freezing temperatures and also impersonate the front desk at a hotel and convince patrons to smash a window with a toilet tank lid to escape “deadly” exotic spiders.
A Florida family staying in an Orlando Hilton was tricked into smashing windows, breaking a mirror, bashing in a wall with a lamp and tossing their mattress outside, causing about $5,000 in damage. The caller persuaded them to do all of that in order to save themselves from a gas leak.
The sheer difficulty of tracing prank calls placed online, and the social-networking programs used by pranksters, has increased their visibility and daring. Though the perpetrators in many of these cases remain unclear, PrankNET’s administrator took direct credit for at least one prank: In York, Nebraska, a Hampton Inn employee was tricked into setting off an alarm and then was convinced that the only way to make it stop was to break the hotel’s windows. He enlisted the help of a trucker who smashed his vehicle into the front door, shattering the glass and causing more than $1,000 in damage.
The owner of PrankNET’s Twitter account — believed to be Dex — claimed in a post the night of the incident, “I just pulled off the most epic prank. I had a hotel guest back his truck into the hotel front window (in the lobby), and break the window.”
Despite this string of incidents, an FBI official in Washington said the pranks do not represent a trend. But cybersecurity experts say such attacks are dangerous and may be on the rise. “It can be very serious for the people who are being attacked,” said Parry Aftab, a cyber law expert. “It will increase as more people get ideas on how to do these kinds of things.”
