A Facebook post is spreading across the social platform that claims to offer free tickets for a cruise with Royal Caribbean. The post claims to offer three different people a balcony room for four people.
Also in the post is a women identified as Samantha Green – head manager of Royal Caribbean – holding up the three tickets.
Greetings all. I’m Samantha Green, a head manager at Royal Caribbean. Today I have some brilliant news, 3 people at random who have shared then commented by 11pm January 25th will each get one of these room keys. Each one is for a balcony room for 4 people for a 10night cruise on any date you want.
The Facebook post is a scam, or rather, a typical Facebook fake competition scam. Such scams exist to trick Facebook users into visiting spammy or malicious websites.
Firstly, the Facebook page that made the post doesn’t belong to Royal Caribbean. This is evidenced by three things…
1. The Facebook page doesn’t have the blue tick denoting an official Facebook page belonging to a brand.
2. The Facebook page is only a handful of months old, and has only made a handful of posts.
3. The Facebook page only has a few thousand followers.
The real Royal Caribbean page has been around for much longer, has a blue tick and has millions of followers, as do most big brands.
Secondly, Facebook posts that claim you can win an expensive prize just for sharing and commenting on a Facebook post are most likely going to be scams.
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Thirdly, as is common with these scams, the page has commented on the post to try and direct Facebook users to a Sign Up link on the page. This link leads to a website not associated with Royal Caribbean, and does not lead to their official website.
The website that the link leads to is a spammy website that will try and harvest your personal information, so spammers can contact you and potentially scam you.
Finally, the woman in the photo isn’t Samantha Green. She is a YouTube blogger called Pippa, a former cruise line worker who now blogs about the cruise line industry. As far as we can determine, she no longer works for Royal Caribbean. She has nothing to do with this fake competition.
Similar scams have previously spread virally offering free trips to Center Parcs and free plane tickets with various airlines, among other high value prizes.
Please don’t fall for these scams, or interact with them. We have a full article on spotting these scams here, and another one outlining why you shouldn’t interact with them “just in case”.