Fraudsters rely on extremely attractive incentives
Scammers have launched a new scam on Facebook, offering hundreds of dollars worth of fake coupons that are supposedly from reputable retailers like Nike, Macy's and Target.
This is not your typical online survey scam, but the steps the potential victim must follow are the same, as is the result of the scam: to get the unsuspecting user to complete the surveys and thus make money for the scammers.
A simple way to make money
The website hosting these fake offers is webcoupons [.] Pw. There is currently a campaign running that offers a $200 gift certificate to victims in exchange for leaving a positive comment about the offer and liking and sharing it on Facebook. It is worth noting that the scammy page announces a deadline for submitting a coupon request, November 27, 2014. OnlineThreatAlerts (OTA), reported that the same page, last week, was promoting fake coupons from Nike and Macy, worth $240 and $200, respectively.
And in this case the scammers used the same trick. OTA says that one of the purposes of creating this type of pages is to increase their traffic so that they can be sold for a larger amount of money. When this happens, all the content collected (comments, Facebook profiles) is passed on to the new owners. Advertising or commercial exploitation of the website may be one of the goals of the scammers, but a page with a higher ranking in search engines can also act as a lever for the spread of malware.
Cancel your "likes" and delete the comment
As is usually the case with most Facebook scams, the offer comes from a friend of yours who has already been victimized and shared the page with others. For security reasons, it is a rule that we never share content or messages that have not been verified, because there is no guarantee of their legitimacy. Sharing is the first action required to get the supposed free coupon. Commenting is the second action required from the victim-user (the comment is also published on Facebook by default). In the third part of the scam, the potential victim must “like” the offer and “accept the terms of participation,” which includes agreeing to participate in online surveys. Users are advised to be extra cautious when encountering suspicious offers like this one. If they have already fallen victim to the scammers, they should “unlike” and delete their comment. Most of the time, scammers recycle the page’s details and use them in other campaigns.
