BMW have warned Facebook users of a scam post purporting to give away a free BMW 435i, by writing on the offending Facebook post itself.
Facebook themselves are notoriously inept at being able to remove spammy fake giveaways that plague the social networking site. Such posts lure readers into liking and sharing posts across Facebook under the pretence they have a chance of winning a prize, despite no prize existing.
These scams often lead to identity theft scams, survey schemes or even malware distribution.
A particularly popular fake giveaway post targeting BMW, which has accumulated [at the time of writing] around 750,000 shares, has managed to stay active with Facebook once again failing to protect its users from a potentially harmful and blatant scam. This has led to the official BMW page to write on the post itself, already the top comment on a thread of over 400,000 comments.
The post from BMW reads –
Posts and Pages on Facebook luring readers into liking, sharing and visiting external websites are very popular at this time of the year and Facebook users are advised to be extra sceptical of such giveaways as the festive period draws closer.
Luckily the post from BMW has slowed the success of the offending post but it is still accumulating shares every second as it shoots around Facebook. Why Facebook allow these posts to stay live on their site is a matter of debate, but what is certain is that the people operating the BMW themed page that posted it are up to something suspicious, with a history of BMW related giveaway posts.
Even if you don’t believe the post, it is still important not to even comment on it, as comments help these posts spread through Facebook.
What do you think? Should Facebook do more to protect their users or is the onus on users to educate themselves? Let us know below in the comments below.
If you’ve been tricked into installing suspicious software then run a full system scan on your computer straight away. Check out our recommendations for security software for 2015.
