Fake news about refrigerators spread on behalf of supermarkets

Today, fake news was spread on behalf of the “Yerevan City” supermarket chain that they were going to give 200 damaged refrigerators by random selection method to those who would share their post and those who would register on the website.

Three hours after publishing the post, it already had more than 1200 comments, and more than 6400 shares.

The same post was shared by Carrefour Market Fans group. This post is also quite popular.

“Gift” refrigerators provided in a number of countries

The same photo was posted on similar pages in many countries over the past month. The content was the same as in the case of our post.

On May 31, the Arabic-language Facebook page titled “Jordan Hashemite Kingdom” shared the same photo with the same text. On the same day, this the phot was shared on another Arabic-language Facebook page. On June 1, the photo of the refrigerators was shared on the Facebook page called Labais, which in Latvian calls for participation in the lottery of refrigerators with scratches. On June 12, two Facebook pages shared the same photo again [1,2].

A fake Facebook page called Defy shared this photo the next day, on June 13. This page has already deleted the post, and the Defy home appliance store has warned customers about fraud.

The photo has been shared on many other Facebook pages, but these few examples are enough to prove that the photos posted on the Facebook pages of “Yerevan City” and “Carrefour” are not new and the refrigerators are not really going to be presented to anyone.

The Facebook pages are fake

To test the validity of such contests, we should study and find out who shares the information and what is its source. The mentioned two pages, which shared the photos, were created a few days ago on May 24.

In addition, the content of the two pages is identical. There are no other posts other than this one.

We were informed by “Yerevan City” and “Carrefour” supermarkets that the contest is fake, the mentioned pages do not belong to them and they have nothing to do with the refrigerator lottery.

What is the aim?

The aim of such “contests” can vary, from gathering an audience to accessing individuals’ bank or other personal data, which will allow the creators of the “contest” to earn money. This phenomenon is a type of cybercrime, which is also called “fishing“.

In the case of this particular contest, after you enter the website they mentioned, it offers you to receive a free gift card, for which you should send them a short message (sms) from your phone number. After this step, money may be charged from your phone number and you will become a victim of a cyber attack.