Facebook Scam: Share to Win a High Value Prize

We’ve all seen it. A Facebook Scam that looks like it’s from a real page telling us that all you need to do to be in with a chance of winning a high value prize (such as a car or a holiday) is comment and share on a page.

More recently, these posts will mention one of these things. If it’s a holiday it’s likely to be accompanied with a claim that “it’s a last-minute cancellation, so we’re giving it away to one lucky person who likes and shares this post”. For a car, it’ll likely be “X person who won the last prize cannot collect as under 16” or claims that it’s an ex-demo. If it’s a high value product, such as a TV, quite often it would claim to be “unable to be sold due to damaged/open packaging”.
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These are a Marketing Scam. There is no prize, the page is fake and sharing “just in case” makes no difference to that.

The good news is, Dorset Tech will explain exactly why it’s nonsense and what to look out for. .

Firstly, here’s a scam that’s been recently doing the rounds on Facebook. It’s from a page called “Range Rover 4×4” and claims that “Aimee Taylor who has won the 2019 Range Rover hasn’t responded to our messages our past few weeks, so we are obligated giving it too someone else who shares and comments before 10:30pm tonight. Best of Luck!”

Before we even start, let’s consider this point. The grammar in this message is inconsistent and poor. It’s littered with spelling and grammar errors that would probably get you a fail mark in a SATs test. Do you really think a legitimate business page for a big brand such as Range Rover would be seen with this level of inaccuracies in its post?

If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

Imagine you run a business selling TVs. One of the boxes in your delivery has slight damage in the corner, but the TV is fine. Ask yourself this question. Are you really going to give that TV away?

The answer of course is no you’re not. The same applies to Social Media. People engage with these posts because they hope to get something, they might not otherwise be able to- and these posts prey on that.

There is no holiday because someone has cancelled. No brand-new top range TV. There is no car. The Prize doesn’t exist.

 

The Pages are Fake

All established brands have their own page. All you need to do is type it into Google or Facebook’s search to find them. They’ll often be accompanied with a blue tick. The pages have been around for a fair while.

Let’s revisit our friends at Range Rover 4 x 4 again and highlight three things.

• 1,100 Likes. The official page for Range Rover- which is a brand of Land Rover, sits at 16.3 million people. Do you really think such a big brand would have so little likes on its page?
• The Page Was Created Today: On the right hand side of the above image, you’ll see a little box called “Page Transparency” which tells you, amongst other things when the page was created. You can see it was created today (6 November 2019).
• It Has One Post: The only post on this page is the one telling you that a previous winner didn’t collect their prize and that it could be yours. So, if this is the only post on a page created today, who won the last prize?

The answer is no one. Because no one can win a prize that doesn’t exist.

“Okay, it’s Fake. So why do people do this?”

Pages like this generally are done as marketing scams. Companies on the more rogue side of the ethical spectrum set up pages such as the one we’ve mentioned with the intention of getting likes and shares through offering prizes such as this.

What they then do with the pages are a little unclear, but generally they sell the information they gain to other marketing companies, who get a ready made page they can edit the name of and push their own product, or worse- their own scam.

It’s also worth remembering that when you use any Social Media website, you leave a digital footprint. The information you share is how they make their money; everything from how old you are to if your favourite food is falafel. Ever wondered how sometimes you see an advert for something minutes after searching it? Or why if you put a political belief as “Liberal Democrat” for example, you might receive adverts from the Labour Party?

It’s because the information you share on Social Media can be used to target messages at you. That like and share tells advertisers you’re interested in Range Rovers in this instance, so you’re more likely to be targeted. Also, you’re more likely to receive more pages like this as you’ve told potential scammers that you’ll respond to it.

There’s never any point sharing something just in case it’s true- it never is.

Remember these points.

• Legitimate Companies are not likely to offer high value prizes- and certainly not when it’s because someone was too young for a prize or just because there’s a bit of damage to a box.
• If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
• The best way to avoid such scams is to ignore them. If everyone paid attention to posts like this, there would be no scams like this.

Want to know more? Here’s an interesting post on this subject. We’ll be back soon with another Dorset Tech Scam Busters.