Is Costco giving away $75 coupon for anniversary? Fact Check

Links on Facebook claim that Costco is giving away a free $75 voucher to any user who shares a link on their Facebook timeline.

FALSE

Links like the one below are spreading through social media.

Costco has announced that everyone who shares this link will be sent a $75 Coupon for it’s anniversary. TODAY ONLY

Despite the claims in the link, this is entirely false, and no one who shares these spammy links across Facebook will receive a free Costco $75 coupon. Scams targeting Costco in this way are nothing new. In January 2018, an identical scam spread across Facebook, only offering $41 vouchers instead.

In fact this is another fake giveaway scam, which are extremely popular online and target many different brands. Such links are designed to trick social media users into visiting spammy marketing websites that are designed specifically to harvest a user’s contact information in order to sell those details to other third party companies.

This inevitably leads to anyone unlucky enough to fall for this scam being spammed by a number of marketing websites.

These scams are incredibly popular on social media, since they rely on the “just in case” justification. That is, social media users fail to see the downside of entering such a fake giveaway and consequently enter it “just in case” it’s genuine.

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This in turn leads to high volumes of social media users willingly give out their contact information to spammers. This can lead to more serious scams, especially if identity thieves obtain the information harvested by these marketing websites and use them to launch targeted identity theft scams.

Costco has announced on their Facebook page that this is a scam.

Despite several posts out there, Costco is NOT giving away $75 coupons. While we love our fans and our members, this offer is a SCAM, and in no way affiliated with Costco. Thanks to our fans for letting us know about this recurring hoax!

Spotting fake giveaways like this is easy. Firstly, the links do not lead to any website associated with the Costco brand. Secondly, the website that does load asks visitors to share a link on their timeline before continuing, which is a big red flag to a scam. And thirdly, the website also asks visitors to complete spammy surveys (which harvest a visitor’s information) which is another red flag to a scam.

We recommend social media users refrain from sharing such spammy links on social media.