HP Tablet Fire Sale Fires Up Pranksters – and Possibly Worse

When Hewlett-Packard Co. discontinued its TouchPad tablet, it sold its remaining inventory at a price that was too good to be true. Pranksters, and possibly fraudsters, caught on quick.

Over the weekend, retailers sold HP's TouchPad, a rival to the iPad, for $99, a steep discount for a product that cost $499 when it launched last month. But in one example, someone claimed to be selling the tablets for $49, luring over 900 people who were seemingly willing to hand over their payment details, according to an article Computerworld ran Tuesday.

The bogus $49 sale was promoted through Hewlett-packard.org.uk, which is not registered to HP.

In that case, it was just a prank, and the website revealed its nature before anyone could type in any sensitive account information, the article said. But "the site could have been used for something much worse," such as a credit card scam, the article said.

The prank site instead plays a video of Rick Astley's 1987 song "Never Gonna Give You Up" when visitors try to add the tablet to their shopping cart. HP has also warned via Twitter of another fake TouchPad sale site, though its spokeswoman's Twitter message did not make clear whether the other site is another prank or an outright scam.