Starbucks is Giving Away Free Lifetime Passes to Celebrate its Anniversary-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Starbucks is giving away lifetime passes for free coffee to mark its 44th anniversary.
The Truth:
Starbucks isn’t giving away free lifetime passes to celebrate its anniversary.
The Starbucks free lifetime pass hoax went viral in November 2015. Scammers created a website that looked similar to Starbucks’ official Facebook page that said people could claim a free Starbucks lifetime pass by “sharing” the page on social media and clicking on a link to fill out a brief survey.
The first giveaway that is a scam is that the address of the rogue website isn’t the same as the address for the company’s official website. Also, the offer doesn’t appear on Starbucks’ official Facebook page, which is odd since it was supposedly a social media promotion.
These types of scams can be used to get you to give out personal information by filling out surveys, to infect your computer with malware, or to trick you into signing up for paid subscriptions. Click here for tips on how to avoid this type of scam from the Minnesota Attorney General’s office.
And if the Starbucks’ lifetime pass giveaway offer sounded familiar to you, there’s good reason.
Starbucks actually did give away lifetime passes for free coffee for life to 10 customers in 2014. That promotion, which was announced on the company’s official website, awarded 10 customers who paid using a Starbucks card or the Starbucks mobile app with one free cup of coffee a day, but the promotion ended on January 5, 2015.
There’s been no indication of whether or not Starbucks plans to offer lifetime passes for free coffee again in the future. Don’t sign up for or click on any offers that don’t appear on the company’s official website