Spotting Facebook Giveaway Scams
Posted by: Timothy Tibbetts on 08/24/2017 03:49 AM
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Facebook scams continue to popup at an alarming rate. Even worse is how many people fall for it. Let’s take a look at one I saw today and show you how to easily spot on of these scams. In this example, DisneyCruise. is giving away 250,000 worth of free cruises. Not just a cruise, but $5,000 to spend too!
Can you spot the problem right away? Notice the name of the Facebook page - “DisneyCruise.” That wasn’t a typo in the first paragraph; it has a period on the end of the name. I’m pretty sure Disney has the copyright to own any Disney name they want on social media. You can walk away just on that.
Also, note that they only have 12,000 likes. Disney pages have 17 million to over 50 million likes. If Disney started a new page, it would have millions of new likes within hours. That’s all you need to know and then some. Wondering what happens next? Let’s take a look.
You need to like and share the page then sign up. As you can see, if you weren't suspicious yet, you should be now. Even weirder is that each survey choice is yet another chance to win.
And, big surprise. I “won” a $100 gift card.
I answered about another 15 surveys that never really ended.
They now have your name, address, and phone number and towards the end, it appears they might be going for your credit card with cheap products.
There are also offers of coupons, and once you get to the end often that takes you to a legitimate advertisement so they can make more money off of you. I’m also not sure I even completed the survey that entered me for the cruise.
Another big one that's continued for years is the Ray-Ban sale. A nice pair of Ray-Bans costs close to $200. They are not selling them for $39.95. Not ever. A big clue here is the name of the website. Ray-Ban is at https://www.ray-ban.com, not some random RayBan website as the domain name. Why would they register an obscure website when they have ray-ban.com? They wouldn't. To highlight the stupidity of these Ray-Ban scams, I had a friend who posted one of these, and I told them it was a scam. The response I received? "My page, my content." That's right; they left it up there. Wow.
Please look before you share. The signs are typically subtle, yet obvious.
Can you spot the problem right away? Notice the name of the Facebook page - “DisneyCruise.” That wasn’t a typo in the first paragraph; it has a period on the end of the name. I’m pretty sure Disney has the copyright to own any Disney name they want on social media. You can walk away just on that.
Also, note that they only have 12,000 likes. Disney pages have 17 million to over 50 million likes. If Disney started a new page, it would have millions of new likes within hours. That’s all you need to know and then some. Wondering what happens next? Let’s take a look.
You need to like and share the page then sign up. As you can see, if you weren't suspicious yet, you should be now. Even weirder is that each survey choice is yet another chance to win.
And, big surprise. I “won” a $100 gift card.
I answered about another 15 surveys that never really ended.
They now have your name, address, and phone number and towards the end, it appears they might be going for your credit card with cheap products.
There are also offers of coupons, and once you get to the end often that takes you to a legitimate advertisement so they can make more money off of you. I’m also not sure I even completed the survey that entered me for the cruise.
Another big one that's continued for years is the Ray-Ban sale. A nice pair of Ray-Bans costs close to $200. They are not selling them for $39.95. Not ever. A big clue here is the name of the website. Ray-Ban is at https://www.ray-ban.com, not some random RayBan website as the domain name. Why would they register an obscure website when they have ray-ban.com? They wouldn't. To highlight the stupidity of these Ray-Ban scams, I had a friend who posted one of these, and I told them it was a scam. The response I received? "My page, my content." That's right; they left it up there. Wow.
Please look before you share. The signs are typically subtle, yet obvious.
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