In these competitions, data is requested, collected and resold. In many cases, you take out unwanted subscriptions or even download malware onto your cell phone or PC. It becomes extremely dangerous when you enter your credit card details.
In short: only the operators win in these competitions. Because data brings money. And obviously this industry is flourishing, because it's not for nothing that we are so flooded with dubious competitions like this.
Example of a competition operator
Today a user alerted us to an extraordinary fake competition. KFC gift cards are supposedly being raffled off here:

As expected, you will be taken to a page where you have to answer a few questions – similar to a survey. You then enter your data such as name, telephone number, date of birth and address and, if you want, you can take out various subscriptions to increase your chances of winning.
The data ends up with third-party providers, so-called “sponsors”. And they use your data to annoy you in the future with spam or further subscription sales.
Fox Hooper – “organizer” of countless competitions
When we look at the advertising library on this site, we see that there are currently a lot of competitions going on here.
Not only in the name of KFC, but also in the name of Monster – energy drink or Shein. There are currently 38 such events in the advertising library. As I said: Selling data should be worth investing money in advertising.


So Facebook delivers fraudulent content in exchange for money. We have already covered this topic in another form. Here, “advance fee fraud” was the topic, which appears to be allowed to spread on Facebook unchecked. ( HERE )
Even back then, our thinking was: These forms of fraud above are certainly not new. They have been known for years and appear again and again. So you don't have to act like you're completely unaware of this, Facebook!
But it seems that nothing is changing here. Such posts continue to appear and we encounter them several times every day. And here we are sure that we only see a fraction of the “big picture”.
We warn, and we warn, and we warn...
We inform you every day about current fake competitions on Facebook and Co. And honestly? It gets boring. The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be getting further and further away. It's not getting less, it's not getting better - on the contrary: it's getting more and more. At least that's how it feels. And as long as Facebook lets such posts pass benevolently with a view of the filling cash register, we will continue to warn.
But please, here from us for you: Our competition warnings , served fresh every day.
Unusual date
Finally, one more point that seems unusual in this competition example. If you noticed, the competition is issued with the date January 1st, 1970. For the sake of completeness, here is just a brief explanation of the unusual date. Because yes: Facebook didn't exist in January 1970. So how does this information come about?
This is “Unixtime”. If a date field in IT says January 1, 1970, you can assume that something went wrong with the date assignment. If garbage somehow arrives there, it will initially say “0”. And in Unix time that is January 1st, 1970, exactly zero o'clock. We have described this “phenomenon” HERE .
Related: Facebook and Instagram: Recognize fake competitions
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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 )

