For all those people sharing Brittish Airways free ticket, look at how its spelt, British is spelt with one t not two, surely its not that hard to see a Facebook scam.
Promoting giveaways for luxury products are a common ruse cybercriminals rely on to trick a large number of people into increasing the value of a page or to lure them into different scams that could lead to financial losses for the victim.
One of the most recent scams of this kind on Facebook claims to give two “lucky winners” one Mercedes Benz G-Class, in a raffle that is not supported by any sort of marketing principles.
The simple eligibility criteria are sufficient to rush a large number of users of the social network into liking, sharing and commenting on the fake post.
Almost 200,000 Facebook users fell for the trick
“For the FIRST time in the history of Mercedes Benz we are giving away 2 Mercedes Benz G-Class to two winners that we will select on June 30 2015 completely at random,” reads the lure.
Users should known that if something sounds too good to be true, in most cases it isn’t. Any company making an offer like this expects in return something that could be useful either immediately, or in the future.
The steps to enter the competition are easy: liking the page and the post, leaving a comment with the desired color in case of winning and sharing the raffle on the Facebook wall.
At the moment, the page can no longer be accessed, but by the time it went down, it gathered over 100,000 likes. The post was more successful as it amassed over 190,000 likes and was shared about 185,000 times.
By asking to share the post, crooks ensure that the fake giveaway is exposed to a larger number of potential victims.
Pages this popular are sought by cybercriminals for promoting different scams, from completing online surveys to distributing malware; alternatively, they can be sold to other individuals engaged in nefarious businesses.
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