14 DAY TRIAL // Crooks have set up a new page for users on Facebook to visit and leave an input, luring them with the possibility to win a two-week holiday in Fiji from Jetstar Airline; the winner of the raffle would allegedly be announced on the social network.
Jetstar is a low-cost airline company in Australia that offers both domestic flights and international flights to farther locations, such as New Zealand and Asia, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the false raffle page.
Artificial popularity boost is what crooks rely on
To make the scam even more appealing than it already is, the cybercriminals casually threw in a detail designed to push users into accessing the scammy link: $4,000 / €3,500 in cash, for the winners to spend during the holiday.
The reason behind all these efforts is to attract as many visitors as possible to a web page and trick them into liking it, leaving a comment and sharing the link with others. When the web page becomes sufficiently popular, the crooks sell it to the highest bidder, along with all the data from the victims.
The scam is called “like-farming” due to its obvious purpose. It started to become more and more common on the social network and it can even be encountered outside Facebook.
One method used by the crooks is to set up a web page that is allegedly associated with a large brand on the market in order to arouse interest through similar tactics.
There is no immediate loss, but the risk is still present
There is an active black market for trading Facebook pages, according to Hoax-Slayer, which can be sold for as much as a few thousands of dollars.
The popularity of the page offers access to an increased audience, which suits all too well to marketing companies, as well as to cybercriminals, whose purpose is to promote new scams like online surveys and affiliate marketing.
In all cases, to enter the fake raffle, the visitor has to do nothing more than spare a like and a comment. None of these cost at the moment, but if a scam boomerangs back at them, they might fall for malware spreading tricks.