Facebook users should be aware of yet another surge of spammy links claiming that a particular airline is giving away free airline tickets.
Examples of the links can be seen below –
RyanAir is gifting 2 free Tickets to EVERYONE! On completing 32 years!
Get yours here – (2 Tickets) per user
WestJet Airlines is gifting 2 free Tickets to EVERYONE! On completing 21 years!
Get yours here – (2 Tickets) per user
As we have stated a number of times before, these links are leading to spammy marketing websites that exist to trick users into handing over their personal information, including their contact information, making them the target for unsolicited marketing calls as well as potentially other types of online scams.
Facebook users may notice that their Facebook friends have shared these links, and as such are more likely to click the links themselves. Upon clicking these links, Facebook users are provided with a series of questions and then told to share the same link with all of their friends.
After that, the visitor is then redirected to any number of spammy marketing webpages that exist purely to harvest the information of those that visit them. Visitors will unwittingly sign up to numerous marketing mailing lists as well as provide marketing companies permission to contact them over post, phone, SMS and email (which is stated in the small, small print of these sites.)
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And of course there are no airline tickets on offer at all. The airlines mentioned in the initial Facebook posts (WestJet Airlines and RyanAir, for example) all have nothing to do with this scheme. This is simply bait to lure Facebook users into giving up their contact information.
Facebook users should be aware that Facebook links (even if they have been posted by a friend) offering free airline tickets for nothing are scams, all of the time.