Facebook users should beware the latest scam making the rounds on the social network. Users are promised 2 free tickets from Southwest Airlines just for posting a link to Facebook and then ‘liking’ it.
While the offer looks too good to be true, it is! Clicking on the like button provides the scammers the opportunity to collect your information.
They try to say that there’s only a select number of free tickets left but when I refreshed the page, the number actually went up, perfectly outing this scam.
Here’s what it looks like (click to enlarge):
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About Emily Patterson
Emily Patterson comes to marketing and web design from a background in magazine journalism and international affairs.
After graduating from Ohio University’s Scripps School of Journalism, Emily took a copyediting position at China Daily, China’s largest English-language newspaper. After two years editing translations of news reports and government propaganda, she was offered a chance to launch a new publication. She worked with an international team of journalists to start Asia Weekly, a magazine with news and features from accross Asia. Emily also freelanced for several publications, including the Cleveland Plain Dealer, her hometown newspaper, and Time Out.
After returning to the US in 2008, Emily turned her eye for writing and design to the blossoming field of website design and management. For the past two years, she has worked as the Web Content Manager for the Better Business Bureau headquarters.
Emily lives in Alexandria, Va. with her husband and dog and is completing University of Virginia’s master’s certificate in online marketing. She loves to cook Asain food, hike and fall asleep on the couch watching movies.
Facebook users should beware the latest scam making the rounds on the social network. Users are promised 2 free tickets from Southwest Airlines just for posting a link to Facebook and then ‘liking’ it.
Why is this not illeagal and stopped? Why is Southwest airlines allowing their name to be tainted? Is there any action/s we can take in this?
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These scams are hard to stop but I’m sure Southwest is doing what they can to shut it down.
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These scams are easy to stop because all you have to do is not post them on your wall. Be skeptical and vigilant about all things at all times!
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These scams are hard to stop because your average facebook user is not familiar enough with the internet to realize how many scams are out there.
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These scams are difficult to stop from the root, is, I believe what Greg means. People will continue to click for free things the same way they continue to buy lottery tickets. Often and without an understanding that – most of the time – if it looks to good to be true, it is. It would be easy to stop anything if the people who were doing the continuation of the act would do a little research, but those are the people who are long on wishes and short on wisdom.
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So what do we do to block it if we’ve already clicked on it?
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Bill – did you fill out any info. Hopefully not. If not, just make sure to delete it from your Facebook profile and not a bad idea to run your anti-virus software.
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Yeah unfortunately I filled out the “survey” attached to this so they have my phone number even tho I didn’t confirm the number when they asked. Still got a text this morning to claim a $100 prize of some sort tho the text had a “reply stop to this message to unsubscribe” on it. Any idea if a charge of some sort will appear on my phone bill?
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EB – you should only get charged for a text message (would be minimal) if sending/receiving is not part of your data plan. Just make sure to unsubscribe.
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Unfortunately you will probably receive lots and lots of spam text messages over the coming months, your cell number will be sold many times over to various spammers. Best thing to do is attempt to unsubscribe, but that can also cause you issues. I tried that reply to this message with STOP to unsubscribe once and I started getting bounce text messages non-stop every minute or so. I ended up calling Verizon and they put a temporary block on text messages to my phone until they could sort it all out and credited me for any text messages I had received. A lot of providers have implemented spam block lists, check with your cellphone provider to see if they have such features.
I was hoping it was legit, since people do run marketing campaigns via facebook. I started filling out info, first red flag was the fact that cell phone number was required but home phone was optional. Next red flag was the “complete these offers” page followed by asking for a cell number again.
I wouldn’t worry too much about information theft since all they asked was pretty publically available information, but I would be concerned about getting spammed incessantly on your cellphone. I would however change your facebook password (as you should every so often anyways). The company running this “scam” is dailyonlinerewards.com, which I haven’t seen anything indicating virus distribution, nor have I seen anything so far indicating any infections coming from them so far. Mostly they just run fake campaigns to get you to sign up for other stuff like cd/dvd clubs, credit cards, various “educational” services etc.
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I also was stupid enough to fall for this scam. (Free tickets are definitely too good to be true!) And now I am getting spam on my cell phone. At least it was just my cellphone number.
Thanks for the suggestions on stopping the spam everyone.
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I filled it out as well..any way to get off the phone lists?
I’m already on the Do not call registry :\
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At least one of the involved parties is Robert Wence, who is registered on the realtraq.net website, which I found in the website’s source code. You can send him spam texts if you like, here: +1.8324344948
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