Warning as thousands of Facebookers fall for fake Center Parcs competition
Tens of thousands of Facebook users have fallen for a fake competition which offered a free holiday to Center Parcs Longleat to users who liked, shared and commented on the post.
The post, featuring a ficticious Center Parcs CEO Mark Frendon, offered the chance to win one of 30 breaks at Longleat.
Wiltshire Trading Standards issued a statement on its website on Friday, warning about the scam after 29,000 people had liked the fake page. Police have issued a similar warning.
"This is a page set up by scammers for ‘like-farming’ and no-one EVER wins a prize," Wiltshire Trading Standards said, adding that those who had liked the page ‘have all put their personal information at risk’.
By the weekend, thousands more had liked the page, commented on and shared the post.
However, the page was only created on November 21 and there was no mention on Center Parcs’ own page of the competition.
Trading Standards advised users to check before liking a page. Checks can include looking for a small blue tick next to the company name to show the page has been verified and to look how far back the posts go.
Posts on the genuine Center Parcs page go back years, while the fake one has posts going back just a couple of days.
The genuine Center Parcs post has about 370,000 likes, while the fake on had 29,000 on Friday, rising to over 60,000 on Sunday.
Fake pages are set up by ‘like-farmers’ to get thousands of likes and shares, then harvest personal information Facebook holds about people.
Experts advise people to be more careful and ‘look before you like’ when such posts appear on their Facebook feed and use their initiative to check the legitimacy of such pages rather than simply liking and sharing.
Center Parcs today said: "We are aware of a page on Facebook offering the chance to win a Center Parcs break, this is not a genuine page. Please do not enter your details and share the page. Genuine pages have a small blue tick next to the name and this shows the page is verified."
Lisa
Lisa joined Travel Weekly nearly 25 years ago as technology reporter and then sailed around the world for a couple of years as cruise correspondent, before becoming deputy editor. Now freelance, Lisa writes for various print and web publications, edits Corporate Traveller’s client magazine, Gateway, and works on the acclaimed Remembering Wildlife series of photography books, which raise awareness of nature’s most at-risk species and helps to fund their protection.
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