Tiny Home fake competition from the Facebook page Bau GmbH

To all 31,676 people who have commented here so far: Unfortunately, we have to disappoint you, you have fallen for a fake.

A complete tiny home including interior fittings of your choice? The dream of many people.

In fact, the dream of over 31,000 Facebook users. And this page promised the prize:

Tiny home competition

We are giving away a tiny home with interior design of your choice.

How to secure your participation:
Write us a comment.
Become a fan of our site!
Bau GmBH Share this post to double your chance!

The competition will be closed on August 13, 2018.
The winners will be contacted via Facebook

This competition has no connection with Facebook.

Good luck!

The fact check

Recently there were fake competitions on a Facebook page called Bau GmbH .

Here too, within a short period of time, many users were fooled using the same pattern.

The Bau GmbH page mentioned above was only created on August 6, 2018 and the competition for the tiny house was the first post ever on this page.

A quick look at the imprint reveals in advance that you are probably dealing with dubious competition organizers:

No address, no contact, no conditions of participation, just a telephone number. A quick check on Google didn't return any results other than the Facebook page itself. A call also went nowhere: “Unfortunately, the number you dialed is not available.”

The photos used provide further information. A backwards search led us to the Christian Bock carpentry shop . The photos were apparently stolen from his website and misused for the fake competition.

Contacting Mr. Bock confirms our suspicions:

… ,
No, we have nothing to do with it and have not authorized anyone to use our pictures for such a fake.
…

The photos were also stolen and used unlawfully to attract Facebook users and generate page interactions.

The user is therefore deceived, because in the end there is no supposed profit.

What can you do against fake competitions?

The first step would be to use our checklist to uncover a fake competition and then report it.

Checklist

• Users are forced to “like” and “share”.
• there is no (credible) imprint
• no conditions of participation
• no contact option
• no correct company available
• Page has only existed for a very short time
• No winners will be announced
• Prizes are provided by sponsors who “do not wish to be named”
• The prizes are advertised with copied images from the Internet
• For well-known companies, look for the blue verification check mark behind the page name in the cover photo

What else can happen

Note: Why does this competition exist? 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 observed large numbers of fake competitions that these types of competitions are always very similar.

In the first stage they shine with their easy 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. The fans just wonder at some point what content they will see after the sale and why they liked this 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.

Result:

No matter what else happens: the advertised profit doesn't exist!

Therefore, remember: there is no one giving away this motorhome, 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.