14 DAY TRIAL // A page on Facebook has recently posted a message about a raffle that supposedly gives 215 lucky users the possibility to win a 1970 Dodge Charger, a car that is regularly sold for more than $20,000 / €18,600.
The number of cars claimed to be given away, combined with the estimated price per item, should be enough to put a “scam” label on the offer.
Page appears to have a legitimate history
However, unlike other operations of this kind, where the crooks use a newly created page to run the scam, this one looks legitimate, as it has been active since 2013 and is populated by numerous posts.
The page has over 300,000 likes and the message with the Dodge Charger 1970 giveaway is pinned at the top, with the post date of April 15. The rules of the raffle are simple: like the page, like the post, leave a comment, and pass the offer to other friends on Facebook.
As enticing as the offer might be, Online Threat Alerts says that the post is a fake and should be reported as spam if the message makes it in a user’s timeline.
Like-farming scam initiated
The scam has been deployed to harvest as many likes as possible in order to increase the popularity of the page, which can then be sold to marketers to promote different products or to other crooks to initiate various scams.
When sold, along with the popularity of the page, all information it contains is also passed to the new owner, which means that the comments, likes and shares can be used by a third party.
Up to this moment, the giveaway post has already received over 135,000 likes and more than 268,000 shares. The number of comments is also very large and continues to increase as multiple entries are recorded every minute.