Instead of waking up this morning to the proprietary echoing blip of the iPhone’s default alarm tone, a bunch of iPhone owners awoke this week to find the alarms they set had been turned off. Why? How? What the fuck happened?

Phony press releases have become the grist for the newest Internet profit mills. If you're like Chris Anderson and us, you don't read press releases. But several tech blogs were taken in by a dubious press release issued by a nonexistent company allegedly backed by real investors who may or may not have invested in several fake companies. Huh? Exactly. How the scam was uncovered, how it works, and how to avoid falling victim after the jump.