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 fictitious 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.