In an interesting show of cross web platform strategy, scammers are using Twitter, file sharing websites and associate marketing schemes to generate an income, and their bait is a supposedly “leaked” or “stolen” version of the v3 OS for Apple’s iPhone, which is due for official release today.

The first thing I noticed was a few people tweeting that Apple had been hacked, this caught my eye as you would expect, but I think you’ll agree once you see the bogus twitter profiles, credibility has left the building.

If you are desperate (not to mention gullible) enough to follow the links they lead to a “file-sharing” site called ShareCash.org, “Make money uploading files!” a name and strapline that should at the least make even the most credulous downloader a little more wary

The link on the site promises you a copy of of a 90kb file though and all you need to do is click the link to download. Let’s see what happens…

Ah, “Complete this offer to continue” and I have to give up all my personal information, this is looking more shady by the second.

Assuming I do want to win a very expensive TV, I submit my details (I don’t recommend doing this by the way) and continue, after all, I want my iPhone OS3 and I can’t wait for Apple to release it officially, right?

Next up:

Look at the progress bar at the top! There are pages and pages of these offers to wade though before you get to the download. Fortunately, the site is so poorly designed that is is impossible to click the “Yes” or “No” radio buttons for each offer as they are hidden under that banner ad running down the left hand side, making it (almost) impossible to proceed (I’m still trying with the tab key and the space bar).

I have no doubt though, that even if a download does exist at the end of this process, it isn’t going to be a leaked copy of the latest version of anything that you should even be considering installing.

The advice as always is, don’t pay (either with information, time or money) for something that should be free, be patient get your downloads from the official source. Don’t don’t download cracked versions of any software, this is one of the favoured distribution mechanisms for malicious code (think Windows 7 or Apple iWork recently) and don’t give away personal information to online marketing schemes.