A surge of fake pages on social media platform Facebook claim that Hollywood actor and former wrester Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is giving away cash to those who like and share posts.
Scammers often pretend to be well known celebrities in order to trick Facebook users into liking and sharing Facebook posts. Only a few weeks ago from the date of this article, actor Tyler Perry told his fans that a flurry of pages using his name to trick users were fake.
And now it seems that a network of spammers is using Dwayne Johnson’s name and image, since a number of fake pages have sprung up all claiming that the actor is giving away lots of money.
In an alarming turn of events, in at least one instance, it seems the spammers have tried to replicate Facebook’s “blue tick” to try and trick Facebook users into believing their fake page is the official, verified page belonging to Johnson. In the screenshot below, the spammers have included the “blue tick” (that Facebook uses to denote a verified page) in the profile photo.
While many may realise it’s in the wrong place (the real tick appears after the page name) it may be enough to fool some.
As is always the case, celebrities are not turning to Facebook to giveaway large sums of money to anyone who likes and shares a post. These are scams designed to trick users into liking a Facebook page, in a process known as like-farming.
Sponsored Content. Continued below...
Many of these fake pages are also trying to lure Facebook users to external websites that belong to spammy marketing companies that harvest your personal information so they can spam you or try and lure you into signing up for expensive subscriptions.
For more information on fake competitions on Facebook, read our article here.