15,000 free items from Amazon as a Christmas present? Probably not.
Just this morning a WhatsApp message arrived on my cell phone. The Amazon logo in the message features a Santa Claus hat, and the text says that the well-known online shop is giving away Christmas presents - 15,000 of them.
When I receive messages like this, they often come from friends or acquaintances who know that we are about to send out a warning. Because – right! – this message is of course rubbish: Amazon doesn’t give anything away. Not even at Christmas.
The usual process of a fake competition
We then always look at what happens when you click on this link.
And no, you shouldn't try this yourself! Instead, please send us such messages when you receive them and we will check them for you.
By the way, the link itself should provide information about whether the competition could actually come from Amazon.
Well-known companies usually use links in which the company name can be found for such campaigns. Although this message mentions amazon.com, the clickable link “tinyurl .su/” followed by a cryptic series of numbers already shows that this is not an Amazon site.
The antivirus program on the PC immediately sounds the alarm and warns that this website contains potentially dangerous content. The page simply cannot be accessed in another browser.
We get further on our cell phones and see the consistent pattern of such competitions.
How do you recognize a fraudulent competition?
You can ask yourself the following questions when you receive such a message:
- Does the contact from whom I received the link often send me messages without comments and just random links?
- What does the link look like? What is important here is what is written directly after http:// or https://. In this case tinyurl. This has nothing to do with Amazon.
- The comments under the supposed competition are fake. This can also be seen in the fact that you cannot write a comment yourself, nor can you respond to the existing comments with a “thumbs up” / “thumbs down”.
- A countdown counts down the supposed number of winnings still available (if you reload the page, the countdown usually starts again from the beginning).
- Asking to forward a message to friends or groups as a condition of winning is also a good indication that it is a scam.
- You should cancel at the latest when you want to download an app.
Conclusion
We repeat: Amazon doesn't give anything away. Not even at Christmas.
What you can “win” here are advertising emails and spam calls if you actually click through to the end and enter your details. Because at the other end there are usually data collectors who are happy to be able to offer data (yes, including yours!) for sale.
That alone is very unpleasant, but it's still better than downloading malware onto your phone or PC, which will only cause more damage.
Therefore: Stay away from competitions that come in any WhatsApp messages and appear to come from a well-known company.
Related:
In the first episode of our joint podcast with “Der Timpel” from Radio 88.6 “Mimikama believe that?” we also took up this topic and explained it.
Take a listen: Podcast Episode 1 Fake competitions and where does all the fake news come from?
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )