Facebook and dubious competitions: Pay attention to details!

We would like to run through a current example with you here.
We were informed that many users on Facebook were seeing an alleged competition from the Danish furniture store JYSK. Sponsored? So it's definitely real, right? Incorrect. Unfortunately, Facebook operator Meta is not particularly rich and therefore has to accept every sponsored post without checking its seriousness - unfortunately there is no money for employees to check it out.

Oh. OK. Maybe it's because his metaverse called "Horizon Worlds" (don't ask what it means!) isn't really a blast... but that's another topic, back to the sponsored ads, here's a current copy:

JYSK is supposedly celebrating its one-year anniversary and is therefore giving away a €500 voucher for its goods.
Okay, that is factually incorrect, because JYSK was founded on March 15, 1979 , the name was changed in Germany from “Dänisches Bettenlager” to JYSK in August/September 2021 .

Step 1: A look at the real site

In this case, it's easy to recognize because the site doesn't claim to be JYSK, but is called "Offers this week", but many other fake competitions are simply called (often with special characters) Coca-Cola or Edeka, a fake one to give the appearance.
So let's go to the real JYSK page on Facebook (see HERE ), because there's definitely something about the competition there, right?

None. Such a big birthday (over a year late) and then it's not even on the original page? This should set alarm bells ringing for you! But let's take a look further!

Step 2: The page transparency

Just go to the main page of a site and look at the page transparency there, because it reveals a lot!
In the current case, the “Offers this week” page even looks serious because it has been around since 2013:

So let's click on "View all" to get more details, because that's where it gets more suspicious:

That's when we find out that the site has existed since 2013 and was called "Bella Ciat Ciat Muaah Winx", but was renamed to "Promo 2022" in May 2022 and to "Offers This Week" in June [1], managed by several people in Spain, Indonesia, Kenya, Ukraine and Russia [2] and has currently placed advertisements [3].

So also suspicious: Several people from abroad manage a page with alleged competitions in Germany, and the page was only recently renamed? It is very likely that the page owner's account carelessly entered his password on a fake Facebook page and criminals have now taken over the page!

Step 3: The Ads

Since we are already in page transparency, we can also see which advertisements have been placed on Facebook by clicking on “Go to advertising library”:

And there are many! In total, the site has placed 35 different sponsored posts on Facebook. This costs a lot of money, but the criminals can afford it, because here's a spoiler: They all lead to fake competitions!

Step 4: The Reviews

This is a small bonus, as newly created sites with fake competitions usually have no reviews at all. In this case, however, there only seem to be positive reviews.

Full 5 stars from 16 reviews! But as is also advisable on other platforms: Here too, we should take a look at the reviews:

1. The “reviews” all contain the same text, copied several times.
2. The reviewers come from – surprise – Spain, Indonesia, Kenya, Ukraine and Russia!

It is therefore very obvious that the operators of the site themselves have rated their site positively!

Let's summarize

Without even clicking on the “competition”, we (and now you too!) can see from the Facebook page alone that this cannot be a serious competition:

• The real site of the company does not report a competition
• The site recently changed its name to a competition site
• The operators of the site are all based abroad
• The operators placed a lot of sponsored posts with different companies that supposedly gave away vouchers
• The reviews come from different people, but they all contain the same text and all “coincidentally” come from the countries in which the operators are based

If you still click on such a link to take part in a supposed competition, be warned: you will receive a lot of spam by phone, email, SMS and post. And that's only if you're lucky, because sometimes you end up with an expensive subscription that's very difficult to cancel.

Also interesting: On Facebook you always see advertisements about “unclaimed Amazon packages”.
Shown are pallets full of packages and boxes that can supposedly be bought particularly cheaply. Stay away from it! – “Unclaimed Amazon packages”: That’s what’s behind it!