Free Costco Gift Card for all Facebook users? Scam spreads quickly
Costco gift card Scams are sadly a fact of life if you're a Facebook user, and scammers are constantly dreaming up new lures designed to trick users into clicking and sharing their revenue-generating links.
One of the schemes we frequently see being used on Facebook is the "free gift card/voucher" scam, where users are tricked into believing that a company is giving away gift cards to Facebook users.
Here's the latest, spreading rapidly on Facebook right now:
Cost Co Facebook scam
Get a Costco Gift Card for FREE! (limited time only)
[LINK]
Costco is currently giving away $100.00 gift cards to all Facebook users!
Let's take a second to think this through properly.
If you assume the message is true, and that Costco really is prepared to give "all Facebook users" a $100 gift card, and believe that Facebook are correct in saying that they have over 800 million users, that means...
#takes out calculator..
A jaw-dropping maximum of $80,000,000,000 (80 billion US dollars)! That's quite a budget Costco has there for its social media campaign! :)
Of course, the truth is that the message has nothing to do with Costco at all. It's simply a case of scammers trying to trick you into clicking on the link.
If you do click, the very first thing you are asked to do is share the link further with your Facebook friends and like the page - thus helping the scam spread virally.
The real Costco Facebook page does encourage its many fans to re-share its posts and “Like” the opening of new stores. That’s quite reasonable. Most brands engage in that activity as part of their promotion via social media.
But it’s very different to fraudulently offering thousands of social networking users $500 gift voucher cards. If the offer were real, wouldn’t it be promoted on the real Costco Facebook page?
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/costco.asp
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