The differences between fake and genuine Facebook competitions
We’ve all seen posts claiming to offer prizes and freebies on Facebook, but which ones are real and which are just trying to scam you?
It is important for Facebook users to be able to determine between both genuine competitions and promotions on Facebook and fake ones, since the social networking site is full of both. So we take a look at some important differences between both to help people spot the scams.
When determining between fake promotions and real ones, it is important to understand the differences.
The Facebook pages behind the promotions…
The most important place to look when determining if a competition is real or not is the people behind it. In most cases, this means the Facebook page responsible for posting content promoting to the competition.
Legitimate Competitions: The Facebook pages will be the official pages of a brand, whether it’s a company like Coca Cola or a radio or TV station. These pages are denoted by blue verification ticks. If the page belongs to a smaller company, like a local pizzeria, the Facebook page will have contact details in the About section, such as a website, email and address.
Fake Competitions: Fake competitions will not be from verified (blue ticked) pages, but may still attempt to replicate them. They will typically lack any contact details, or just copy them from the official Facebook page. Often these pages are anonymous without any information on the specific business or people behind the page.
Legitimate Competitions: The Facebook page will also post content not related to competition or giveaways.
Fake Competitions: The Facebook pages will usually just continually post fake competitions posts or other type of clickbait (like-farming) posts.
Legitimate Competitions: The Facebook page behind a legitimate competition will have a long history of posting relevant content related to that business.
Fake Competitions: The Facebook page is likely to be a new page with little content.
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How to enter…
Legitimate Competitions: For big prize giveaways, users will usually need to register their entry on the official website or app belonging to the business behind the giveaway. For small prize giveaways, Facebook users may be asked to like the official Facebook page or a brand and comment/like on a post to enter.
Fake Competitions: Fake competitions will urge you to share a post onto your timeline, as well as like a post and follow the page. However conditioning entry on sharing a post is against Facebook’s terms of service. Some smaller, local businesses may overlook that. In which case take special care that the Facebook page is legitimate as we discussed in the point above. Fake competitions may also request you visit spammy, third party marketing webpages designed to harvest a user’s personal information.
Example 1
Legitimate Competitions:
This post was made by the official Coca-Cola Facebook page, which is denoted by a blue verification tick, and is one of thousands of posts made by that page. The post does NOT ask users to share it, rather follow the page and like the post. The link leads to the official website for Coca Cola.
Fake Competition:
In this post, the Facebook page that made the post – iPhone S5 Giveaway Free – is not a page belonging to Apple. It had no contact information, and this was the only post the page had made. The page urges users to share the photo onto their newsfeed as well as like it. It also linked to a spammy website that asked us to give away lots of personal information, which the small print claimed would be sold to more marketing companies.
Example 2
Legitimate Competitions:
This post was made by a local gaming store in the UK called GameSeek. While the Facebook page is not blue ticked, a quick browse of the page soon revealed it was the legitimate page for the brand. It contained numerous articles linking back to its website, and the “more details” link also led back to its website. The post did not ask users to share to enter, instead they had to like the post and leave a comment.
Fake Competitions:
This post claimed to give away a luxury RV by sharing a Facebook post. The Facebook page was anonymously run with no contact information and all the other posts on the Facebook page were also claiming to give away luxury RVs.
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