Links are spreading on the Internet that claim Marlboro is sending out free cartons of cigarettes to anyone who shares a link on Facebook.
Links like the one below are spreading through social media.
Marlboro has announced that everyone who shares this link will be sent 10 Cigarette Cartons for it’s anniversary. TODAY
The claims are false, and no one who shares the link will receive free cigarettes. This is a typical fake giveaway scam that are popular on social media. 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 scheme being spammed relentlessly.
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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.
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.
Spotting fake giveaways like this is easy. Firstly, the links do not lead to any website associated with the Marlboro brand (PromoBoro.win and Com100years.com are used by the scammers in this case.) 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 strongly recommend social media users don’t share such spammy links on social media.