Facebook posts claim to offer a free £150 Morrisons coupon to Facebook users who share and comment on them.
Facebook posts such as the one below are spreading virally on social media, specifically Facebook.
We will reward 1000 people with a FREE £150 Morrısons coupon Who Sħare this Post & Comment ” Me ” below. Make Sure You Like Our page too ! * This contest will end on 10/12/2018 or when our coupons stock gets over.
Despite the claims made on the post, this is just another fake competition like-farming scam on Facebook, of which there are dozens running every single day. The aim of such posts is to trick Facebook users into sharing them, which helps the page behind the post – in this case a page called Morrisons Reward – accumulate followers.
In most cases, the posts or photos being spread are later edited to include a link to a spammy marketing website that is designed to harvest the personal information of visitors so they can be later targeted with spam, through email, SMS and phone.
The Facebook pages themselves – which have attracted a substantial number of followers – can then later be sold off, or used to launch further spammy posts or in some cases more sinister Internet scams.
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Such scams are particularly prevalent over Christmas, and in the past have targeted almost all high street brands, as well as popular cruise companies, travel companies and airlines.
In this case the page is clearly fake since the page behind it lacks the blue verification tick that Facebook gives legitimate pages for large brands. The page also is very new, and has published no other posts other than the posts offering the £150 coupon.
Despite the prolific nature of such scams, Facebook users still seem willing to regularly engage in such posts “just in case” they are genuine, which they are demonstrably not. We have authored a post here which points out the reasons why users should not engage with such like-farming posts.