Delta Airlines Giving Away Free Tickets-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Delta Airlines is giving away free first class tickets to anywhere in the world, as well as $5,000 in spending cash, because January “has been such an amazing month” for the airline.
The Truth:
Delta Airlines isn’t giving away free first class tickets, or $5,000 in spending cash.
That rumor started with a fake Facebook page for Delta Airlines. The page uses the same logo and font as Delta, but the name is spelled “Dalta Airlanes,” a sure sign that this is a hoax.
Readers were instructed to “share” the post and to “like” Dalta Airlane’s Facebook page to qualify for a drawing for free tickets that would be held on February 3rd.
This appears to be what’s known as a “like farming scam.” Scammers mimic familiar companies and extend fake offers to trick a large number of people into liking a Facebook page. Then, after all those likes make the page more visible to Facebook users, the page is sold for a profit, Consumer Affairs reports:
But what is like-farming? Facebook policy forbids it, though of course scammers and con artists by definition tend not to follow the rules. Like-farmers start pages and fill them with content dedicated to collecting as many “likes” or “shares” as possible in the shortest amount of time.
Since Facebook’s algorithms place a high value on popularity (as measured by likes and shares), these highly liked and shared pages therefore have a much higher chance of appearing in people’s “Feeds” and being seen by other Facebook users.
Then, once the page has a sufficiently high popularity rating, the like-farmer either removes the page’s original content and replaces it with something else (usually malware or scam advertising); leaves the page as is and uses it as a platform for continued like-farming in order to spread malware, collect people’s marketing information or engage in other harmful activities; or outright sells the highly liked site to cybercriminals in a black market web forum.
Anytime you see an offer for free products and services, make sure that it’s coming from the company’s official Facebook page. In this case, “Dalta Airlanes” can easily be identified as an imposter, but differences can be more sublte, too. Also, remember that most reputable companies would never ask you to give out personal information over Facebook. If you’re asked to do so, be on the look out for scammers.