We’re passed the half-way point of the year and it perhaps comes as no surprise that both scammers and hoaxers are still using Facebook as frequently and creatively as ever. Here we outline 5 of the most popular scams and hoaxes that has become popular this year.
5. Free Gift Cards and Vouchers
Everyone would like a gift voucher or gift card for a popular shop, supermarket or website just for joining a Facebook page or event, or by clicking the Share button on some website. But the fact is that these are hardly ever genuine. In fact most of these are scams designed at luring Facebook users into completing useless surveys which are designed to harvest as much personal information from unsuspecting victims as possible, leaving them susceptible to postal spam, text spam, email spam, unwanted sms subscriptions and even identity theft. Once Facebook users complete these surveys they find out the gift cards or vouchers do not exist, but by this time it is too late.
Typically such scams spread via Facebook posts like the one below because a key component of these scams is by coercing Facebook users into spreading the scam to their own friends list on Facebook.
This post falsely claims to offer free Tesco gift vouchers but leads to a survey scam.
Never complete surveys or rewards programs in order to get free gift cards or vouchers. These are nothing more than scams.
4. Fake Events
If you’ve ever been invited by a Facebook friend to join an event that offers free tickets, or other free stuff providing you invite all of your friend first, you’re more than likely looking at a fake event scam.
Just like the previous example, these scams rely on offering free goodies that don’t exist and lure Facebook users into inviting all of their friends to the event before they work that out.
Fake events will usually contain a list of instructions that tell a user to first join a group, then invite a certain number of friends and then click on a link to complete the process.
However the link could take you to a survey scam or could try and install malware onto a computer.
Remember, you don’t get free stuff for joining events and inviting your friends to do the same, so if you get invited to them just report the event to Facebook as spam and inform the friend that invited you to do the same.
3. Celebrity Death Rumours
Yes celebrity death rumours have been a popular type of Internet hoax for many years now, even pre-dating Facebook, but 2012 has seen a rise of near-identical hoaxes that have begun to circulate Facebook virally, and by near-identical we mean in many cases it is literally only the name of the alleged dead celebrity that has been changed.
This influx of dead celebrity hoaxes owe their success to either satirical websites that deal with “reporting” fake stories or websites like fakeawish.com that allow anyone to generate their own fake death story by entering a celebrity name and choosing from a number of pre-designed “news reports” that simply insert the desired celebrity name into the story.
A typical webpage falsely reporting on the alleged death of David Guetta
Popular examples include dying in a car crash, falling from cliffs in New Zealand or a snowboarding accident. Remember celebrity death hoaxes are the simplest to verify because mainstream media will cover such breaking stories instantly, so always verify such stories on credible sites first before spreading!
2. Altering the Facebook Layout
2012 has seen one of Facebook’s most dramatic layout changes since the site launched way back in 2003 and this was not something that was going to be overlooked by scammers. Many users didn’t get on with the new timeline or the Facebook ticker and the social networking site was rife with “opportunities” to remove them and revert back to the older layout.
However many of these were scams designed to do any number of things to a user’s Facebook account or their computer. As soon as the timeline was released many Facebook users were inundated with links to websites or Facebook applications that all promised to alter the Facebook layout.
However these often led users to survey scams designed to steal personal information, or they led users to websites or Facebook apps that attempted to install malware onto a user’s computer.
A Facebook application page that prompts users to install malware
There are a few legitimate browser extensions you can install to alter the way your Internet browser displays a Facebook webpage. For information on these check out this link. However do not trust any other claims that assert to remove the Facebook timeline, these scams are still popular!
1. Sharing a Picture Results in Donations
One particularly nasty hoax that has really become popular during 2012 is the hoax that falsely asserts sharing or liking a photo will result in a donation being made by Facebook or someone else. The most popular variant of these is the “sick baby hoaxes” that involve photos of disabled or injured children being uploaded and shared on Facebook under the false pretence that sharing them will result in donations in aid of the child.
Sadly these photos have been stolen elsewhere from the Internet and used to perpetuate the hoax. In many cases the children have grown up and recovered. In other unfortunate cases the children have since passed away. In either case the photos are being used without the permission of the child’s family and in most cases the pranksters seem only interested in accumulating as many shares and likes as possible off the back of unwitting Facebook users and the child in the photo.
An example of how a babies photo is used in such a hoax.
No one donates money based on the number of shares or likes a photo gets on Facebook. These are always sick hoaxes. For more information on these hoaxes read here.
Remember that a little knowledge goes a long way. Just by reading this article you are now prepared against five of the most popular hoaxes and scams that circulate Facebook today. Just by seeing how these scams and hoaxes operate you can ensure that you will never fall for them yourself. Share this with you Facebook friends and make sure that they too are protected as well.
