How to spot a Facebook scam
You see a post in your Facebook newsfeed that appears to be a contest or give-away from an airline - maybe even one from Jetstar. You wonder “is this real or a scam?"
The infographic above shows you some quick checks you can do to figure this out.
There are broadly two types of airline-related scams popular in Australia these days, by the way:
1. Automated phone scams
In this type of scam you receive a phone call from someone claiming to be from Qantas, Jetstar, Virgin Australia or Tigerair. They tell you you’ve won a holiday, travel voucher or frequent flyer points. But, in order to claim your reward, you need to give them your name, email address and credit card number.
This scam is dangerous because, if you fall victim to it, you risk giving scammers your identity and financial information.
A lot has been written about this type of scam:
- SCAMwatch: Automated scam calls claiming to be from Qantas with bogus holiday win
- ACMA: SCAM ALERT: Scammers posing as Qantas and Virgin Australia
- Qantas: Scam phone calls purporting to be from Qantas
- Jetstar: Scam Alert: The scammers have the phone box
- Virgin: Automated Scam Calls
- Tigerair: Please be aware that…
2. Facebook contest scams
In this type of scam you see a post in your Facebook newsfeed which appears to be a contest or give-away from an airline. You don’t have to do much to enter: just like and share the post.
This scam isn’t immediately dangerous but, if you do fall victim to it, what you have done is told scammers that you’re not too careful about what you read, like, and share online. This suggests you might be a good target for future, more dangerous online scams. This type of scam is known as a like-farming scam.
Not too much has been written about this type of scam, which is why we created that infographic. You can read more about it here, though:
- Global Travel Media: Now scammers get busy faking Jetstar Facebook pages
- TheAge: Jetstar Facebook Fiji competition a fake, fools thousands
Whenever we see this type of scam we report it immediately to Facebook. Facebook then takes about 24 hours to delete the fake page (they have their own review process to follow).
If you do see this type of scam in your newsfeed please:
- report it as spam to Facebook,
- tell us about it on our real Jetstar Australia Facebook page, and
- send your friends a link to this post so they can learn how to avoid scams like this in the future.
Finally, we’d like to say a huge thank-you to all the people who have alerted us to scams like this in the past and will, hopefully, continue to do so in the future!
http://jetstar.com.au-new-promotions-1.win/?EhHJ7iR%2F
Is this a scam or real? I would really love the free tickets!
Thanks
is this a fake email scam...
The email address was contact@jehmeu.com. I assumed this was not genuine and have "unsubscribed". Was I correct?
Hi received an email today from this. Believe it is a scam?
Regards
Shanan