Facebook links to a free $41 Costco voucher are scams

Links are spreading on Facebook that claim wholesale chain Costco is giving away a free $41 voucher to celebrate their 41st anniversary.

The links claim that a Facebook user needs to click a link in order to claim their free voucher. An example can be seen below –

Costco providing FREE $41 voucher to Everyone! This week to celebrate 41 years of services.
Celebrate with Costco

Costco rewarding FREE $41 voucher to Everyone! This week to celebrate 41 years of services.
Celebrate with Costco

It’s a typical free voucher scam where scammers are attempting to trick Facebook users into clicking a link and giving away their personal information to spammy marketing companies, in order to try and receive a free voucher that in reality doesn’t exist.

Sponsored Content. Continued below...

As is typical with these scams, upon clicking the link (which appears in their newsfeed, usually having been shared by a Facebook friend) the user is taken to a webpage that requests they share the same webpage on their own timeline, thus spreading the same scheme to their own friends. Often the page will also ask the user to share the link to the page in Facebook groups of which they are a member.

After that, the user is then instructed that they first must complete various surveys and questionnaires before getting their free voucher. It is these surveys that are designed to harvest a user’s personal information, which is then used to bombard them with spam.

Sponsored Content. Continued below...

Users who click the link and complete the surveys can expect to be bombarded with spam via postal mail, SMS, email and even phone calls.

Only after completing the surveys does the user realise that no such free CostCo voucher exists and the fake promotion actually has nothing to do with CostCo, but by this time it is too late.

Don’t click links offering free vouchers that require you to share a link from your timeline and complete spammy surveys. These are scams.