Is Adidas giving away free shoes on Facebook? No.

Links that purport sports brand Adidas are giving away free shoes are spreading across Facebook. The links claim that Adidas is celebrating their birthday.

However, as our regular readers will be well aware, this is nothing more than yet another fake bait-and-switch giveaway scam that is doing the rounds on Facebook. See below for an example link.

Adidas is giving away free Shoes to EVERYONE to celebrate its birthday!
Get Yours Adidas Shoes now while supplies last!

Upon clicking any of these links spreading across Facebook, users are taken to a webpage that is typical of these sorts of scams. The page asks a number of questions and falsely claims only a small number of free pairs of shoes remain available (which resets when you refresh the page.) The page also requests you share the page on your own Facebook timeline and to post a link to it on Facebook groups of which you are a member.

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This helps the scam spread between users on Facebook. Upon sharing the page, you are then instructed to complete surveys and questionnaires, which represent the “switch” part of the bait-and-switch scam. These so called “surveys” that harvest your personal information, which means being targeted with more spam and unsolicited communication from “selected third parties” (which means any spammy marketing company that is willing to pay for your contact information.)

And there are no free Adidas shoes on offer at all. It was just a ruse to get you to hand-out your personal information to marketing companies.

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.

We discuss how these Facebook giveaway scams work here.