I’ve got an example of an online scam that people just won’t stop passing along to others. I’ve shown you examples of similar scams before. What really kills me about these is that post shared by people I know to be intelligent adults. Let’s check them out.
The first is a play on a favorite new social media scam. Facebook fakers claim there’s been a contest with a great prize and that the winner has failed to claim the prize. So, they’re holding the contest again but only for a short period of time. Having participated in the management of contests before, I can tell immediately it’s a scam. If the grand prize winner doesn’t respond to a contest, you just draw another name from the entries you already have.
When I head over to the FB page for this alleged contest, I can see that it was only recently created, there are only a few photos, and all the posts relate to this alleged contest.
What’s this scam all about then? It’s about tricking you into sharing it and then getting you to click on links to go to other pages or links sent to you in messages. These links can download spyware, malware, and even ransomware to your device. Some scams might use the old trick of telling you that you need to pay taxes upfront to collect your prize.
Another motive is something called “like farming” which I’ll explain more more about in a future tip.