The Easter holidays are coming up, so you can fly away. It's best if you get a few free tickets, they don't cost anything!

However, with the promise of “Austrian Airlines is giving away 2 free tickets” it doesn’t work out, so you end up staying at home. Unfortunately, this competition is misleading on several levels. But let's start with the simple process description.

In status messages on Facebook, but also as messages via WhatsApp, many users see a competition that promises free tickets from Austrian Airlines for EVERYONE. The occasion is the 25th anniversary. Fact check: Austrian Airlines was founded in 1957 and was taken over by Lufthansa in 2008. How you get to 25 years of June is a mystery.

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But let’s take a look at what’s behind this generous promise of winnings and follow the request “Win ​​your tickets here – (2 tickets) per user”.

Well, the first thing that jumps out at us at this moment is the access warning from our protection software , which detects a danger in the website with the address “austrianair. website” sees. We are taking the liberty of ignoring this warning in order to be able to take a look at the exact process of this competition.

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At this point you end up on a website that presents itself as a kind of quiz. This website presents itself as Austrian Airlines, the logo and corporate design are used. However, the answers in this quiz are completely irrelevant for the rest of the course. It doesn't matter which answers you choose, a winning confirmation always appears at the end. This promise of profit forms the bridge to the actual goal.

However, before you get any further, you first have to “SHARE” the POST (Share in Facebook) for “virality purposes”. By the way, this is how the status post shown above is created on Facebook. On the other hand, in the second step you should click on a “Like” button.

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However, this click on “Like” triggers a redirect and you end up… surprise… in a so-called affiliate. If you take part in this competition (which, interestingly enough, we present as a Ryanair competition), whoever has integrated the link into their website and forwards you to this competition will receive a commission.

This is also the reason why such fake competitions (like the Austrian Airlines competition) are constructed: The aim is to display advertising or to incorporate advertising links in a credible and effective way. The author of the fake competition simply doesn't care whether their own content is correct.

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By the way, the affiliate competition built into the end is not illegal. However, it has nothing to do with the previous bait.

What does Austrian Airlines think about this whole thing?

The company mentioned, in this case “Austrian Airlines”, has nothing to do with the status contribution and competition mentioned! This is now also confirmed on the Facebook page:

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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 )