Fast food restaurant Jack in the Box are indeed giving away 1 million burgers to those who complete the sign-up process.
(Ed update: That’s 1 each, not a million each, sorry!)
It may sound like something we’d be writing about with the word ‘scam’ plastered all over it, but the promotion is actually legitimate. So we thought it would be a good time to illustrate the differences between the legitimate Jack in the Box promotion and your average scammy Facebook ‘promotion’.
If you see a link on Facebook purporting to give something away, then you’d probably be justified for being sceptical. Fake bait-and-switch scams designed to trick you into following spammy Facebook pages and parting with your personal information are prolific and greatly outnumber the legitimate promotions you may encounter on social media.
But there are legitimate promotions, and a recent offer by Jack in the Box is a testament to that. So how can you tell what is real and what is not?
Well, we’re glad you asked. Here are some important differences.
The Jack in the Box promotion was published on their official Facebook page.
Like most brands, Jack in the Box has an official Facebook page. This is denoted by the blue tick on the page and the large number of followers they have accrued. The promotion (as you can see below) is clearly advertised on their official Facebook page.
This wouldn’t be the case if it were a scam. Whilst many scams pretend to be from well-known brands, they obviously don’t have access to their official Facebook pages, so they create pages that masquerade as a brand. These will not have that all-important blue verification tick.
The Jack in the Box promotion links to the official Jack in the Box website.
When you click the link that advertises the promotion, you are forwarded to the real Jack in the Box website – at jackinthebox.com, where you can enter the promotion.
Scams that redirect to websites will instead redirect to third-party websites that have nothing to do with the brand they are pretending to represent.
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You don’t have to share anything on your timeline
The Jack in the Box promotion doesn’t require that you share anything on your Facebook timeline.
While legitimate promotions may ask you to like a page or like a post, they are not allowed to ask you to share anything onto your own personal timeline. This is against Facebook’s terms of service regarding promotions.
However this is a hallmark of a scam. Scams are notorious for redirecting to webpages that ask you share them so they appear on your own Facebook timeline to help them spread.
The Jack in the Box promotion doesn’t need you to fill out irrelevant surveys or enter “reward programs”
Jack in the Box need your email address, but that is about it.
Facebook bait-and-switch giveaway scams are often designed to harvest a users personal information, and so lure visitor to third party surveys or questionnaires (the ‘switch’) that have nothing to do with the alleged promotion.
You can verify it with the media or through Jack in the Box
You can verify that the promotion is genuine as it has been covered by mainstream media. But failing that you can email Jack in the Box directly and they will confirm that this is a legitimate promotion to which they are involved.
Obviously this could not happen if the promotion was a scam.
We hope this provides some help when it comes to determining fake promotions and legitimate ones. You can read more about fake promotions through our article here.
