Classic Prize Scam

It is amazing people do not understand the dangers of these posts. Where do I begin to count how many ways to tell this post is fake? Readers of my columns will know the tell-tale signs, but more importantly they also realise the dangers of sharing this nonsense. However for those that haven't yet learnt to scam proof their lives, let's do a quick study of this post still doing the rounds after years in circulation. 1. This post has been circulating since 2012 - Don't you think they would have announced the winner by now? 2. Doing a reverse search on the image (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7On6vr398g) shows that the image is not unique to the post and is therefor fake. 3. There is a "full stop" after the originating brand page - another classic clue of a scam. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIZYvuhyf8U) 4. Any competition that starts with "This is not a joke" - is likely a joke. 5. There are at least 5 grammatical, spelling and syntax errors in this tiny post. Most people think this is because the people behind these scams don't use English as a first language however this is not true. The scammers want to filter out of their data base social media users who are able to spot these errors - they might be too switched on to fall for the end game. The scammers want the people that DON'T check the small print, DON'T pick up the errors and DO believe everything they read on Internet. By liking/sharing a post so littered with obvious errors is just the kind of gullibility the scammers are looking for. 6. Did anyone notice that first there are 05 lucky people that miraculously turn into 50 winners? Again failure to notice this obvious error proves unfaltering gullibility and makes the sharer an extremely vulnerable target. 7. I have written too many articles about the end-game of like/share scams like this to include it again here (you can source my articles from looking on the home page) but if you are one of the those people that thinks "what difference does it make if I like/share a post even if it is fake" then you would probably have no conscience about donating to an anti-Rhino poaching fund only to discover that it was a fake fund created by poachers to fund their next poaching operation. Scammers can sell your details gleaned from the database created by you sharing this kind of thing and they can also sell fake Facebook pages for loads of money to fund other criminal activities. Pages with huge fan bases (likes) attract huge cash value.

#prize #scam