Facebook posts claiming you can win a free Apple iPhone 6 Plus once you like and comment on it are spreading virally across the social networking website.
The post, below, claims that 100 iPhones will be given away to “100 lucky winners” and to enter you need to like the post, share it on your timeline and comment what colour you’d like your prize to be. At the time of writing the post has been shared hundreds of thousands of times.
We are giving Only 100 Iphones on April 10 / 2016
100 Lucky Winners Will Be Messaged via fb On April 10 .
Step 1) Like this post.
Step 2) Comment which color you want.
Step 3) Share On Your wall.
Good Luck to everyone !!
Once again this is just another Facebook giveaway hoax. There are no iPhones being given away – rather it is just a way to lure people into sharing a post and liking a page in a process known as like-farming.
Like-farming spammers want people to follow their pages so they can either sell them to marketing companies or use them to initiate further more serious scams. Read more about like-farming here.
When these fake posts go viral, it is no uncommon for them to be edited to include a link to a marketing website along with the assertion that to stand a chance to win the iPhone you need to click the link and enter your personal details, which are then given to marketing companies and inevitably result in the visitor being targeted with spam.
The scam has many red flags. For one, it is against Facebook’s terms of service for promotions to request people share posts onto their own timelines. Additionally the page that made the post was only created days prior and is clearly not a page officially related to Apple, and also lacks the blue verification mark to show it officially belongs to Apple.
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We’ve been warning of these types of scams for a long time and people continue to fall for them “just in case” they’re true. However these scams often lead to victims being targeted with excessive spam and even identity theft. Do not share these links on your own timeline as you are only putting your own friends at risk of the same scam, and remember to delete them if you do fall for this scam.
The latest must have gadgets and Apple products common targets with this type of spam, and we always recommend avoiding it since it is only the spammers that will profit – they get paid every time they recruit someone into visiting one of the marketing websites. You can read our full article on fake Facebook giveaways and competitions here.
