At Prizeology we know what makes a good prize. We know that holidays are always very popular, the latest technology always goes down well, and giving away a lot of vouchers can be very successful. Unfortunately, we’re not the only people who know what makes a good prize.
Scammers are well aware of what people want to win, too, which is why they’re offering a Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro as a prize. (Actually, I’m not entirely sure what that is, but it’s definitely a vehicle.) What do you have to do to win? It’s amazingly easy, because all you have to do is share a Facebook post.
Unfortunately – yes, you’ve guessed it – this is a ‘like-farming’ scam. You’ll be asked to visit a website to validate your entry, but you won’t be entered in a prize draw. Instead, the website will gather your contact details and send you spam. That might not sound so bad, but believe me, it is.
This particular scam doesn’t have any tell-tale spelling mistakes, but the page isn’t verified (doesn’t have a blue tick), so it isn’t an official Toyota page, and it was created relatively recently (use the page transparency feature to check).
Another feature of the scam that should set alarm bells ringing is that Facebookers are asked to share the post to their own timeline, but this is against the Facebook terms and conditions for promotions. This is because if a user has the privacy settings on friends only, page administrators can’t tell whether an entrant has shared a post or not.
In this particular case, there was a more recent post which said that the prize draw had taken place, but had subsequently had to be re-run because the winner was too young to legally drive. This was a nice touch, but I’m afraid it was just an attempt to appear authentic and a bare-faced lie.
All I can say is don’t share this post or anything similar on any platform. If you aren’t sure whether a post is a scam or not, err on the side of caution and don’t share it. You might worry you’ll be missing out on the opportunity to win a new car, but – honestly – you won’t.
Read more about prize scams on the Scam Busting section of the Prizeology blog. A great site to read about prize scams, or check if a story you read on social media is fake, is That’s Nonsense.
Sarah Burns is Prizeology’s Chief Prizeologist and a National Trading Standards Scams Team Scambassador.
