As many of my friends know, I am not only a tenant at Telsec, but I also write some blogs for them and sometimes endorse them on my own Facebook account. I have requested permission of the Telsec management to write this little rant, because I am really beginning to find myself being sick and tired of seeing fake “like” requests in the form of photos that have been photoshopped. I am sure you have seen them and may have even given them a “like”, only because you thought it was a good thing to do. But what you do not realize is that you are feeding into fakers and fraudsters who stand to profit from your “like” without any regards for the good causes they are piggy backing their fraud on or without any regard to the photo they have manipulated.
There is one such photo floating around Facebook, where a little girl is holding up a sign that says: “Hello Facebook! My mom agreed to give up smoking only if I could get 1 million likes.” With a simple reverse image lookup, one finds that the photo is from iStock images and the original photo is a girl is holding a blank sign. I wonder how those 360,000 people who “like”d that image on Facebook would feel if they knew the truth. The truth is that some scam artist fooled them into “liking” a fake photo. Often times the million “likes” this photos request are coming from people looking to sell the Facebook page and the website to another company based on the popularity and amount of “likes” the page has.
Then there are other fake pages that promote “Like this photo if you support our troops” and there a soldier is holding a sign that says “like if you support the troops”, again another reverse image lookup will probably show that the original sign did not say the same thing. The troops didn’t get anyone’s support, the company posting the fake photo did. The most unfortunate part is that sometimes these types of like requests are actually click jacking scams in order to redirect you to a fake Facebook page whose sole intention is to steal your personal information or install malware on your computer for their own profit.
Now let’s talk about other scams people do on Facebook, the fake giveaways. I am sure you have seen them, they are the ones that your friend sent you telling you that you too can “Get a Free iPad” or “Free McDonalds Meals for one year” just by entering their contest or filling out their survey. These types of scams often turn people off of entering legitimate sweepstakes. So how do you tell the difference between a scam and a legitimate contest? A scam will often take you to a third party random page that is not associated with the company claiming to offer the gift and nor will you find anything about the giveaway on the companies official website. A legitimate contest like the one that Telsec is running on Facebook to give away an Opus Mountain Bike and free passes to the Toronto International Bicycle Show will not only be clearly marked on the Telsec-Office Space Toronto Facebook page, but also displayed on the Telsec website, but also the Toronto International Bicycle Show website.
I often tell my friends and family that, before they sign up for something that sound too good to be true or before forwarding some heart sobbing story or photos requesting “A Million Likes”, they should check it out to see if it’s for real. A great resource for finding out about Facebook scams is https://thebulldogestate.wordpress.com.