I quite often see Facebook friends liking and sharing posts to win free cars/holidays/tvs from pages reputedly of major brands or retailers, such as this one from ‘Argos’ to win a free tv: Fake Argos page

The page clearly isn’t really Argos, the real Argos Facebook page has over a million likes and posts more than 5 times in 2 years. I don’t understand how people can be so gullible, you see competitions for all sorts of things such as free Jaguar cars. Why would Jaguar want to give away a £80k car in exchange for a load of freeloaders liking their page?

What is the objective behind getting a load of people to like and share a fake competition from a fake company? Once they get a load of likes do they then change the page to reflect their real business? Thats all I can think of as the basis of the scam.

Once they get a load of likes do they then change the page to reflect their real business?

Or, they’ve just got a load of validated real email addresses to sell on.

Or, they’ve just got a load of validated real email addresses to sell on.

I could see that being why they do it, but how? Usually its just a like and share deal, no email needed.

Once they get a load of likes do they then change the page to reflect their real business?

You can sell “likes” so a theres a business in building up a page of likes – by offering unavailable free stuff, or ‘my doctor said if I got a million likes he’d cure my leukaemia’ or ‘like of you remember spangles’, that kind of thing then sell the page. Someone can buy it and change the name.

Or, they’ve just got a load of validated real email addresses to sell on.

I don’t think anyone gains access to your email address just because you Like a Facebook page.

My understanding is that they either change the page to spam, post spam from the page, or they flog it to someone else on the basis that it is a page with X million Likes.

^as above. You can sell the likes

It always amazes me that otherwise really smart people think that tesco will give them a 50quid voucher just for clicking a button.

The liking and sharing is the ‘free’ marketing the scammers get. The fake promotion page will be clicked on by some proportion of those people liking the page and some people will then fill in the survey; enter the competition; sign away their first born etc. Such an easy way to harvest personal data.

range rover giveaway just tell us which colour you want! LMAO. These pages are great for finding easy marks for the scammers I would imagine

It’s called Like Farming

As said, “like farming”

Works really well and most people are suckers. Heart warming or tragic or funny picture with some nonsense story, or a competition offer so long as you like or share. All you are actually doing is boosting the profile of that account. Then when it’s got enough reputation they sell the account and it’s used to sell products and advertise as the reputation will boost its ad ranking.

Same goes for the endless quizzes and nostalgic click bait posts. Not only are they generating ad revenue via the site you click onto, but you’ll probably like or share the post as well.