A Facebook post apparently from “Zara Ireland” that claims you can win “12 minutes in our store” where the winner can take everything they want is spreading virally across the social networking website.
The post claims that in order to stand a chance of winning you need to like the Facebook post, share it onto your timeline and comment “12 minutes” onto the post.
Like with many of these posts, it is likely to be edited at some point to include an additional step that involves visiting a spammy marketing webpage that harvests your personal details. In fact the post already has a comment from the page that includes a link to a webpage that attempts to trick visitors into giving their mobile phone number which enrols them into expensive text messaging subscription plans.
You can see the post below.
WIN 12 MINUTES IN OUR STORE!
Now you have the chance to go crazy in one of our stores and take everything you want for 10 minutes!
To join you have to:
1) Like the picture.
2) Share the picture.
3) Comment “12 minutes”
We will find a winner monday! – Good luck.
This is actually yet another like-farming scam where the Facebook page posing as “Zara Ireland” is using deception and exploitation to make its Facebook posts go viral. Of course there is no competition on offer by Zara
There has been a surge of scams recently that claim you can win a number of minutes in a particular retailer store to take “anything you like” – they all appear to be like-farming scams that have nothing to do with the retailers they are exploiting in their Facebook posts.
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Any official offer from the retailer Zara will be launched from an official Facebook page associated with the retailer, which is designated by a blue tick. The Facebook page that posted this particular post lacks this verification tick, meaning it should not be trusted.
You can also detect a like-farming page if they ask you to share an image to your own timeline, since this is against Facebook’s terms of service regarding promotions.
Also, always check the history of a Facebook page making these sorts of posts. Like-farming pages tend not to have much of a history since they are usually newly created pages.
Once again, we’ve been warning of these types of scams for a long time and people continue to fall for them “just in case” they’re true. However these scams often lead to victims being targeted with excessive spam and even identity theft. Do not share these links on your own timeline as you are only putting your own friends at risk of the same scam, and remember to delete them if you do fall for this scam.
Read more about these scams here.
