Forget luxury cars, you can get your data stolen with this Facebook scam

We’ve seen dozens of scams in our digital lives post Facebook, yet this particular one captured my attention with the impressive number of Likes and Shares.

Over 90k people are following a Facebook community that promises to give away free luxury cars in exchange for Likes, Shares and some personal data.

The flow is as follows – the user lands on the “Range Rover 2016.” Page/community after seeing in his News Feed that some of his Facebook friends liked it. The page displays the giveaway’s post and asks the user to Like, Share and Comment. When the user attempts to share, he/she is prompted with this message:

If you to continue, you will also be asked to complete a form to receive your gift, in case you win. Its link redirects you to a page offering free apps.

By clicking on any of the links, you land on a site/domain known to serve malware, specifically a Trojan that can steal your personal information. So, stay safe!

To correctly identify a fake Page and lottery-type scams, you need to pay attention to these elements:

• Page Likes – even if a page has thousands of Likes, that doesn’t prove it’s authentic. Fraudsters can buy Fake Likes or use compromised accounts to generate them in order to make their scam more convincing. Read more.

• Official signs – some pages and profiles have been verified by Facebook to let people know that they’re authentic. If you see a blue badge on a Page or profile, it means that Facebook confirmed that its authenticity and it belongs to a public figure, media company or brand.
• The content – anything suspicious, from the lack of photos to the name of the page (sometimes, the page name has a dot or underscore at the end), the lack of URL website, or if the Page is classified as a community.