Links spreading online claim that Facebook users can claim a free voucher for supermarket Tesco for sharing a link.
Some examples of such links can be seen below.
Free £45 Tesco Voucher
Tesco is giving away free £45 Vouchers to every family! One Voucher
TESCO has announced that everyone who shares this link will be sent a £70 voucher to celebrate 101 Anniversary! TODAY…
Get Free £74.99 TESCO Voucher Now. (638 Left)
Claim your free £74.99 TESCO Voucher this Christmas. Offer still open!
Fake promotions and giveaways are prolific on social media platforms like Facebook. And links that purport Facebook users can get a free voucher or coupon for sharing a link are a particularly popular variant of fake giveaway.
Typically such links will claim a supermarket, in this case Tesco, is giving out free vouchers to celebrate their anniversary.
As our regular readers will well know, it’s a scam. Such scams operate in a similar way to those like-farming fake competitions that ask you to like & share a post to stand a chance of winning a prize. Both are geared towards enticing Facebook users to spammy marketing websites that want to harvest a user’s contact information so they can spam them or sell their details to other marketing agencies.
Sponsored Content. Continued below...
If a Facebook user clicks on one of these links, they are directed to websites that requests they share the same link to their own friends to proceed, thus spreading the spammy links further.
Users are then instructed to complete a series of questions and surveys to qualify for their free voucher. Often, users are told they “qualify” for a free voucher based on how they answered a number of qualification questions. In reality, the questions are irrelevant and users are told they qualified regardless of their answers.
Users are directed to websites like the one we’ve included below and instructed to complete surveys to claim their voucher.
However, websites like these often have alarming small print. The one above, for example, includes the following small print terms and conditions.
Yes, I have read and agree to receive advertisements via Email, Phone, SMS, and/or Post about the products or services of Claims Helpdesk and all other sponsors listed here(click here for your communication preferences)
Small print like this means any information a user enters will be sold to third party marketing companies, who then use that information to bombard users with unsolicited and often worthless offers and promotions. And none of this has anything to do with Tesco, who are not providing free vouchers. The vouchers were simply used as bait to lure Facebook users to such spammy websites.
Ultimately, it’s all a ruse to lure victims to spammy websites which collect their contact information to bombard them with marketing calls, texts and emails.
Don’t fall for these scams. No supermarket or high street brand is going to hand over free vouchers to everyone. It’s just a scam.