If you take a quick glance at your Facebook feed, you’ll probably see a few posts from friends, family, or acquaintances liking, tagging, and commenting on posts promising to pick out a winner. You may have even tried your own luck as well. But what happens when the Facebook contest turns out to be fake?
One netizenshared a storyfrom their high school days when they did their utmost to win a Facebook contest. But when the winner was announced, they grew suspicious and decided to investigate, culminating in some unhappy revelations and petty revenge. Readers shared their own tales of contest drama.
Interacting with a Facebook post seems like a harmless way to maybe win a small prize
Image credits:A.Savin (not the actual photo)
But one person decided to dig a little deeper after losing a contest they should have won
Image credits:Pixabay (not the actual photo)
Image credits:Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)
Image credits:yamanshan
Cybercriminals have a lot of tools they use to scam people
While this practice is more commonly found in emails, some take a more creative approach. Hacked social media accounts are used to send out links to friends, followers, and others who might trust the source. They are perhaps asking you to like a post or help them participate in a giveaway. Once you click on the link, you’ll be taken to a page that most likely looks legitimate until you poke around or inspect the URL. The most sophisticated examples can already cause harm just from you clicking on the link, fortunately, most phishing attempts still need to trick you into giving away personal details.
So the best response would be to simply avoid any link until you can verify the source. While OP was not a scammer, nor intended any harm, the method they used was not particularly far from what a real scammer would do, in the hope that at least a few people in their contact list would click. However, the page administrators likely didn’t expect that cheating on a contest would bring so much attention. As OP said, they were in high school and had all the time in the world to ruin this page’s day.
Image credits:Mikhail Nilov (not the actual photo)
Contests are a popular way to get people’s attention online
Readers also gave their own stories and suggested some good ways to avoid or at least spot similar scams. And it’s always important to remember that no business gives things away out of the goodness of its own heart, these promotions exist to get attention and have people do a company’s social media marketing for them. Others will give discounts that people can “win,” leading them to still purchase goods and services they didn’t really need.
Image credits:Yan Krukau (not the actual photo)
Readers congratulated OP on their tenacity
Others also shared their experiences with Facebook contests
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