Watch out for British Airways £500 voucher scam on Facebook

While the prospect of bagging a £500 British Airways voucher for clicking a Facebook link may sound enticing, our regular readers will know this is nothing more than your typical fake voucher scam that we see on Facebook every single day.

Links are spreading on Facebook – posted by other users – that claim British Airways are giving away £500 vouchers to celebrate their anniversary. See below.

British Airways are giving away vouchers to celebrate their anniversary!
Get yours here – 1 voucher per person

This is just the latest in a long series of scams that claim various companies or brands are giving away freebies to celebrate their anniversary, and they’re all scams. Such scams use the bait of free vouchers or gift cards to lure unsuspecting social media users to spammy marketing webpages that are in the business of harvesting user data – specifically contact information – so they can bombard those who visit them with marketing calls and spam email.

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Those who click the link will be asked to share the link from their own timeline to help the scheme spread. Then they will be forwarded to the sign up pages of various giveaways and sweepstakes in what is essentially a bait-and-switch scam (a free voucher as bait, signing up to spammy sweepstakes is the switch.)

Of course the bait – the free voucher – doesn’t exist. British Airways aren’t giving away any vouchers and have nothing to do with this scheme at all.

But those who fall for this scam may not know that. And by the time they find out they may have well already given up their contact information to spammers. In which case they can expect an imminent bombardment of spam solicitation heading their way.

We discuss these types of anniversary scams in more detail here.