A surge of scams purporting to offer 10 or 15 minutes to “go crazy” in a particular retail store have hit Facebook, luring users into sharing images to their timelines and visiting spammy marketing webpages.
The scams are targeting different brands including JB Hi-Fi, Tesco, Kmart, Marks & Spencer, Primark, Zara and others.
In all cases that we have seen, these are just like-farming scams designed to accumulate likes and direct people to spammy marketing webpages.
The scammers behind these posts have set up Facebook pages that appear to be associated with one of these particular brands and are posting images that claim by sharing, commenting and liking the image you can win 10 or 15 minutes within a particular store to “go crazy” and “take everything you want.” Most of the posts will eventually be edited to include a link to an external marketing website designed specifically to harvest personal contact information to spam people who interact with their site.
In all the cases we have seen, these competitions do not exist, and the posts circulating Facebook are not affiliated with the retail brands they use in any way.
Take for example this post below which targeted Tesco in the UK –
WIN 10 MINUTES IN OUR STORE TO GO CRAZY!
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. Comment “Crazy”
3. Share the picture
We will announce 5 winners the 22th of June!
Good luck!
Tesco have previously asserted that the offer has nothing to do with them. This is evident by the fact that the page that made the post was NOT the official Tesco Facebook page (the official page will be denoted by a blue verification tick by the title name) but by a like-farming page set up only days earlier. It is always worth checking if the Facebook page posting these types of posts is the official Facebook page or just one using a brands name and logo.
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These spammy posts are designed to both accumulate likes for like-farming pages (learn more about like-farming scams here) and to direct visitors to spammy marketing webpages that harvest personal information. We recommend never interacting with them.
Also avoid interacting with “competition” posts that require you share a specific post onto your own Facebook timeline since doing so is against Facebook’s terms of service, and is a red flag for a scam.
We have been warning our readers of these types of scams for a long time and still many people continue to be duped by 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.
