Watch out for this bike competition on Facebook

There is a page on Facebook called Decathlon Bike Fans . Apparently you can win a new bike including accessories there!

We looked into the matter. It's currently this Facebook status post. Apparently you want to celebrate the company's birthday with your fans and as a reward you can win a bike. The status post looks like this:

At this point we can refer directly to the company's actual Facebook page, which can be found here . The “Decathlon Bike Fans” Facebook page shown has absolutely nothing to do with the original and is being misused for this scam.

The “Decathlon Bike Fans” Facebook page is about getting access to the participant’s private data. This happens at the moment when the user clicks on the Facebook post and ends up with a competition form that has nothing to do with the actual promise, namely being able to win a bike!

As soon as you click, you will be redirected to a website outside of Facebook. In addition to alleged Facebook comments, which were faked, there is also a question that the user has to answer.

Once the user has answered the question, a competition form opens and lo and behold, there is no longer any bike to be seen, because now it's all about a voucher worth EUR 500.

At this point you can see that the user now has to provide their full name and email address. Below the form there is the following note in small print:

Registration on this site is free of charge. I agree that the organizer, the main sponsors and qualification sponsors may contact me by email, push notification, post and/or telephone about offers from their respective business areas and that the data will also be passed on to these sponsors for this purpose. If you are not interested, we ask you not to register.

What does that mean?

By entering your data, declaring your consent and clicking “Continue”, you agree that the organizer itself as well as its main and qualification sponsors, the list of which is very long, may contact the participant by email, push notification, post and /or contact us by telephone about offers from their respective business area and the data may also be passed on to these sponsors for this purpose. This in turn means that you are bombarded with ADVERTISING via various channels, such as email, telephone or post. At the end there is also the company that provides this form.

This is toleadoo GmbH.

This is a marketing company that uses private data obtained through such competitions for advertising purposes. The participant himself is often not aware that his data will also be sold on to third parties who are mentioned here as main and qualification sponsors. In the end, the promised prizes are never up for grabs; aggressive telephone advertising is often reported in this context.

How do you get rid of those phone calls, emails and annoying advertisements?

The operator himself writes the following on this topic:

Revocation: The user can revoke his consent at any time. A revocation can be made by email ( [email protected] ) or by post (toleadoo GmbH, c/o Talk2 GmbH, Rheinstraße 22, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany). Participation in the competition remains unaffected by the cancellation.

read through the company's reviews on Google at this point . One affected person describes the situation as follows (sic!):

Data collectors and traders. Anyone who leaves their data here, for example in great Facebook competitions, can soon look forward to tons of spam in their email inboxes and mailboxes overflowing with advertising! Oh, not to forget: the great spam calls at every possible and impossible time of day. Have fun! Such companies should be stopped, in my opinion this is fraud, especially with regard to these dubious “competitions” where there is nothing to win.