Latest trend: make an album out of it!

This summer, fake competitions are popping up like mushrooms. And it's fascinating how many users still believe they can win this and that. Such fakes are usually always designed according to the same pattern.

However, we have observed a new trend - it is now “in” not to create status posts anymore, but simply to make albums out of them.

Just like in this competition:

Screenshot by mimikama.org
Screenshot by mimikama.org

Competition De'Longhi fully automatic coffee machine We are giving away a De'Longhi fully automatic coffee machine worth €1599 on August 16th. The conditions of participation are simple! 1️⃣️ Be a fan of our site -> fully automatic coffee machine 2️⃣ ️Like & Share this post 3️⃣ Write to us in the comments how much coffee you drink a day. Only users from Austria, Germany and Switzerland are eligible to participate. For data protection reasons, the winner will only be notified personally. This competition has no connection with Facebook. Legal recourse is excluded! Good luck to all the participants

The fake competition

What actually constitutes a fake competition? The criteria for participation are quickly listed:

  • Leave a Comment,
  • split,
  • like and/or
  • send a personal message.

Sometimes a deadline for participation is added, but the competitions are usually deleted before this deadline.

To ensure that there are no actual winners, they should be contacted via personal message. If the fake is successful, a new competition with a different prize will be created within a very short time. It doesn't matter whether you were able to win a car before and then a dream house...

The main thing is that users interact or follow a link that they receive via private message and that actually has a completely different purpose.

Note: Typical indicators are also such promises - “press I like it and it will be added to our lottery pot!” and “whoever shares the post has a double chance!” and very important “the page – name-of-page – must be liked”.

What does a serious competition have to offer?

A competition run by a reputable organizer must be transparent. Key features:

  • Site owner/contact person
  • imprint
  • Contact option
  • Conditions of Participation

Reputable companies deal with the topic of competitions on Facebook and present them correctly. Among other things, reputable organizers ensure that an imprint, a contact and conditions of participation are available, which are also necessary from a legal perspective. But be careful, because every now and then the organizers go to the trouble and invent legal notices.

It is therefore worth researching the information provided.

Screenshot by mimikama.org
Screenshot by mimikama.org

The contact details for fully automatic coffee machines are probably fictitious, as neither the company nor the address can be associated with a reputable dealer.

What else can happen

Note: Why is/was there this competition? Of course there is a financial interest behind these sites. There are various ways in which you can profit from successful fake competitions. Everything is possible, from harmless page sales to nasty subscription traps.

So far, we have seen a lot of fake competitions that these types of competitions are always very similar. In the first stage, they seduce with their simple participation. You should share and like a high-quality potential win. Anyone can do it, it's not a hurdle. This attracts people.

Possibility of “side sales” / “like farming”

With the help of these attracting events the site is then “bred”. The site operator is working to increase fan numbers. At a certain point, this site will be for sale. Fans just end up wondering what content they'll see after the sale and why they ever liked that page.

“Affiliate” option

Once the number of participants reaches a certain point, the description of the competition will be changed. The conditions of participation are supplemented and a link is usually included that you should visit. There are some affiliate programs waiting there through which the “organizer” collects commissions.

In the harmless case, these are partner programs that provide the participant with a lot of advertising; in the extreme case, there is a WAP billing subscription trap hidden behind the link for visitors via smartphone (from which the organizer also collects commissions, of course). Every now and then you can find these sophisticated Facebook pages for sale on eBay.

No matter what else happens: the advertised profit doesn't exist! Therefore, remember: there is no one giving away this house, this mobile home, this Audi, 100,000 iPhones or 50,000 PS4s. No, they don't exist, these chivalrous benefactors of the Internet. They are more like tricksters who entice their users to eat out of their hands like click animals.

Result:

It cannot be assumed that fully automatic coffee machines are a serious, serious competition.

Participation is more likely to be used to raise people for the purpose of side sales. The page was only created on August 14, 2018 and only contains this one post. A reputable company would be interested in establishing its business before any competitions take place.

In addition, we only know this way of setting up competitions from fake competitions. It can therefore be ruled out that these coffee machines actually exist as a profit.


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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 )