Last week, a fake $500 Whole Foods coupon scam was going around Facebook, and now nearly 40,000 users have fallen for an Ikea gift card scam on the site. The sad part is that an Ikea scam already happened in Mar 2010.
PC World is reporting that nearly 40,000 Facebook users signed up for a $1,000 Ikea gift card offer early today, which was unfortunately fake. The scam offer, like many others, pulls people into a Facebook Fan Page, then directs them to click on a link to sign up. In addition, users are told that they have to fill out two “offers” from companies — a popular and legitimate way on Facebook to give away freebie items and services. In this case, the companies that users are supposedly filling out offers with are Netflix and CreditReport.com.
Naturally, by making the gift card offer seem like it’s available for a limited time, scammers are going to lure some small percentage of over 400M Facebook users into websites with innocent-seeming domain names, and successfully fill out sensitive personal information. Besides tricking people to reveal such information, possibly for identity theft purposes, a common finish for such scams is to install viruses or other malware on their computers.
Today’s Ikea gift card scam follows another Ikea scam in March that apparently had 70,000 victims. In the PC World article, a Facebook spokesperson suggested that they’re working on a way to automatically remove Fan Pages that host such scams. Three Fan Pages have already appeared warning other Facebook users not to join the offending Page, which appears to have been removed. The site Ikea Fans has more on the scams.
Did you or someone you know fall for the Whole Foods or Ikea scams? If you’re concerned that an offer you’ve seen online, whether at Facebook or elsewhere, is legitimate, check out Scambusters for the latest info. (Warning: annoying popup on Scambusters site.)
Image via Ikea Fans.
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All we need is a REPORT SCAM button.
Comment by Robert Pa?kowski — April 10, 2010 @ 6:21 am
If your brain does not have it's own "report scam" button, then having a physical button will do no good. A person has to have a certain amount of intelligence to see through these scams. More and more amongst us loose that intelligence once the word "free" is placed in front of them.
Comment by Carter Burger — April 10, 2010 @ 6:41 am
I agree, All we need is a REPORT SCAM button.
Comment by Kashmir Travels — April 12, 2010 @ 2:34 pm
I don't get how so many people fall for these scams. Every time I see someones spammy application posting updates in my news feed I immediately block it.
Comment by chris Olbekson — April 12, 2010 @ 8:58 pm
the latest scam doing the rounds is the
96% of people will fall asleep after watching this hypnotism video.
do not follow the instructions on the page, as it is a viral marketing scam,….
Comment by matthias jonas — April 13, 2010 @ 5:24 am
[...] has been rocked by a number of scams on its site, often getting people to fill out offers. This can mean that people get tricked into revealing [...]
Pingback by Application fbcounto is a scam — November 4, 2010 @ 6:14 pm
I agree with you.
Thanks for your Info
Comment by PARIS Web designers — October 20, 2011 @ 7:49 am
[...] 14 will be a special day for Facebook fans of home-furnishings retailer Ikea: Bring Your Own Friends [...]
Pingback by Ikea Will Reward Facebook Fans And Their Friends — December 19, 2011 @ 8:23 pm