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The fake Primark survey scam promising a £100 voucher is just the latest sham on Facebook

A new scam aimed at Facebook users has resurfaced. Promising a £100 voucher, the sham puts people at risk by asking them to share personal information.

Fashion lovers in Great Britain could have come across in recent days upon a Facebook post promising a £100 Primark voucher to all that complete a short survey. But according to Hoax-slayer, the post is nothing more than the latest sham going around on the social media site aimed at obtaining personal and financial information.

Clicking on the voucher will actually lead the users to a phony survey and no matter how many question one user answers, the much awaited prize will never actually be delivered. Users will receive a message pointing out that they are “the lucky winners” and to receive the voucher they will have to share the post on their Facebook page. This propagates the sham and makes the user spam his or her friends.

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According to the same source, the surveys ask for name, address, telephone numbers and email and those that have completed the survey could be facing large phone bills and be inundated with promotional emails, phone calls and junk mail.

Survey scams have become common and most of them have several things in common: they speculate emotion, requires users to share links and posts and to complete a survey giving out personal and financial information that can be sold to marketers, hackers or identity thieves. Also, many of the scams create a sense of urgency by telling users that the offer is limited, in number or in time.

And vouchers are not the only ones that can get Facebook users in trouble. Clicking on links with news about celebrities or articles with sensational titles or content as well as messages like “See who is stalking you on Facebook”, can lead to falling victim to an online scam.

The Primark scams has not only affected British users but has also appeared on the feed of users from Germany. The post instructed German users to share, like and comment of the content while also sending an SMS and complete a survey in order to receive a €3500 prize.

Sylvia Jacob

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