Viral fake Facebook post claims Centre Parcs offering holiday for 4

Another viral post is spreading across Facebook claiming to offer a free trip for four people to Center Parcs to those who share and comment on the post.

The below post has managed to accumulate hundreds of thousands of shares in only a few hours, making it one of the most instantly viral fake competition posts we’ve ever seen.

Hello everyone, I’m Mark Frendon the CEO of Center Parcs. Today I have some fantastic news, 30 random people who’ve shared and commented by 11pm tonight will each be receiving one of these envelopes containing a Center Parcs holiday for 4!

And it is entirely fake. There is no free holiday on offer here. As is typical with these scams, they exist to lure Facebook users to spammy websites that will harvest their contact information in order to spam them. The spammers behind the fake post have added a comment claiming those who wish to win the prize have to click a link. It is this link that will lead to the spammy marketing websites. Those who click the link and give their information away in order to win this holiday will be relentlessly spammed, through SMS, email and phone.

There are multiple tell-tale signs that this is a scam. For one, the page that posted the fake post isn’t the official Center Parcs UK Facebook page, since there is no blue verification tick on the page. The official page for Center Parcs will have that blue tick.

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Additionally, despite the caption in the post above, Mark Frendon isn’t the CEO of Center Parcs, since that role belongs to Martin Dalby. And the man in the photo above isn’t either of those; it’s Mark Freidland, Creative Director of Couture Communications, posing with the golden envelopes for the 2016 Oscars ceremony.

Center Parcs UK told us that they have reported the fake page to Facebook though at the time of writing the post remains live.

It isn’t the first time this photo has been used by such spammers. It has previously been used to promote similar scams targeting Carnival Cruise and P&O Cruises. See below

Please don’t engage in these scams. You make yourself vulnerable to crooks online, and you’ll have your personal data harvested and sold to marketing companies, meaning you’ll be spammed. We spoke to two people who fell for these scams and detailed their stories here.