Fake Facebook page claims to offer family trip to Lapland

A fake Facebook post is spreading across the social networking website claiming to offer a family trip to Lapland this Christmas.

The post (below) was posted by a page called ‘Christmas Trip Lapland‘ and claims that in order to enter, a Facebook user must like, share and comment “Lapland” on the post. The post has managed to accumulate over 190,00 shares in only 2 days.

How would you like to win a Family trip to Lapland this Christmas? Prize includes Flights, Hotel for 4 people and a meet and greet with Santa (plus presents) to Win simply:-
Like This Post
Share This Post
Comment “Lapland” below.
Good Luck

However the post is a clear like-farming scam that is designed to trick Facebook users into engaging with it so the page can accumulate followers. Once the page accumulates enough followers, the page name will change and the posts advertising free holidays will be deleted and other more sinister posts are likely to appear leading to spammy or malicious websites.

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These types of pages are also known to message followers to try and scam them using an advance fee scam.

Eagled eyed and scam-aware readers will easily be able to deduce that this is a like-farming scam. For one, the page is brand new and at the time of writing has only published the one post. There are no details about the people/company behind the alleged competition and no contact details. The Facebook page is not the official blue ticked page of a brand nor does it represent a local business.

What’s more, it claims you can win an expensive prize – in this case a trip for 4 people to Lapland – just for sharing and liking a Facebook post. These competitions don’t exist. For one, it is against Facebook’s terms of service to request participants to share a Facebook post on their timeline, and while some (smaller) companies do often use these tactics, it will be for small, cheaper prizes, not expensive ones.

Both these points signal one thing; this is a like-farming scam, and readers are advised not to engage with either the post or the page. Read more on how to spot these scams in our post here.