Two real life stores about the dangers of fake Facebook competitions

Facebook is plagued with posts claiming you can win expensive items like holidays, cars, campervans, mini-homes or cruises, just for commenting something like “WIN” on a Facebook post.

Many of us enter them just in case, thinking what harm can they really do? Many of us don’t even check to see if the Facebook post is real, or just masquerading as a real company (which is so easy to do in most cases, since legitimate pages belonging to brands have that blue verification tick!)

The problem, of course, is that engaging with these posts paints a bullseye on our account. It makes us vulnerable to scams, because that comment, or that share, means scammers know that person is a potential target, apparently inexperienced enough to have engaged with the scam post in the first place.

This is what can happen if you fall for these not-so-harmless scams, as demonstrated by our interviews with two victims of fake Facebook competition scams.

Jerome

How did it start?

My friend had shared and commented on a post offering a free Disney cruise for 4 people. It was funny because my eldest had just seen an advert for one of the Disney land venues the day before and was jumping up and down about it. So I thought what the heck and commented WIN, which is what the post was asking people to do to stand a chance of winning. Pretty easy.

What happened after that?

An hour or so later a notification popped up. The page, think it was called Disney Cruises or something, had also commented on the same post I had commented on. It said that to win I’d need to confirm my email so I could be notified if I won, and it gave a link. I clicked it and was taken to a webpage asking me to sign up for a free holiday. I assumed it was for the Disney Cruise so I gave my email and name. It then started asking for more and more, including my phone number and address. I thought maybe this wasn’t so easy after all! It asked me some other stuff, which I answered, then it just said thanks for signing up and the window just went to a message telling me to close it.

Sponsored Content. Continued below...

Then what happened?

Not much happened for the rest of the day. I didn’t know when the winner would be announced, but I assumed I wouldn’t hear anything about it, unless I won, which was pretty unlikely because thousands of people had commented. Then the next morning my phone rang with a withheld number. I answered it and there was an automated message telling me I won a free holiday, I just had to call a number they provided. I immediately though wow, I won that free Disney cruise and started to write the number down I needed to call. The automated caller then hung up and I looked at the number they gave me and realised it was one of those insanely expensive premium numbers. I realised then that this was probably just a marketing scam and didn’t call it.

Then my phone rang again about 30 minutes later and now I had some guy with a thick accent telling me my phone number was picked randomly and I have been selected to stand a chance of winning an iPhone or something. I hung up, and realised something wasn’t right. Two marketing calls in about an hour!

That thought was later confirmed when I opened by email later in the day and saw about a dozen emails from who knows where offering all sorts of things. I know now that the website I entered my information into had been selling my data to anyone and everyone, and even today I’m still paying the price for that, I still get emails now. The telemarketing stopped when I changed phone number. I don’t give that out to anyone any more.

The scam:

Jerome fell for fake Facebook competition that exist to lure victims to spammy marketing websites. Such scams pose as legitimate brands and tell Facebook users that to win a really expensive prize, they need to click a link, either in the post, in the comments or a Sign Up button on the page. These lead to marketing websites that are after one thing – all your contact information. Those webpages usually have small print at the bottom telling you that your data will be given to “third party companies”. That means even more marketing companies who will spam you.

To avoid these scams, remember to only trust the official blue ticked Facebook pages of brands, and never give away all your personal information to enter a competition.

Sponsored Content. Continued below...

Sally

How did it start?

With a post from Ellen, or her show she does, offering a free Christmas. It had a big Christmas tree with hundreds of pressies underneath. You just had to share and comment on the post and they’d pick a random winner. Think one of my friends had shared it, so thought it would be legit. Never watched Ellen but I know she gives stuff away like this all the time.

So you liked and shared the post?

Yes. It asked me to comment YES PLEASE or something like that. And I shared it on my timeline.

Then what happened?

About 20 minutes later I got a message from the Ellen page telling me I won, and congratulations. I’ve never won anything like that before. They told me they were going to pass me on to Ellen’s processing agent. That person said they were called Mary and that I had to give them a copy of my ID for verification purposes. I then had to give them my details including my home address. Then I had to pay a shipment fee which would be reimbursed. They said it had to be paid with iTunes vouchers, which was weird. That cost $80 but they said the value of the gifts would be like a $1000 worth so I did it.

When did you realise it was a scam?

After I passed them the voucher codes they said I would hear back, but I never did. I tried to send a reply later on but it said I was blocked. The day after that I went onto the page to try and get an update but it said the page was no longer there. I did a search and found loads of similar pages, and they were all posting the same competition or really similar ones. Then I realised I had been scammed.

The scam:

Sally fell for a fake Facebook competition using advance fee fraud, which is an increasingly popular type of scam that is hitting Facebook. Like the first scam with Jerome, this starts with a fake Facebook competition. However in this case instead of luring visitors to spammy websites, the crooks commit advance feed fraud, meaning they trick the victim into paying an upfront fee on the promise of a much bigger reward. However that reward doesn’t exist.

Don’t EVER give money to someone to receive a prize, and never transfer money to strangers using gift card voucher codes or services like Western Union.

The following two cases demonstrate how dangerous these fake competitions can be, and how entering them “just in case” is never worth the chance of making yourself vulnerable to scams. To learn more about spotting these fake scams, read our article here.