It's your own friends who send you these competitions. The reason: You fell victim to a viral marketing method. We explain (again) what’s behind it.

After constant raffles for Europa Park tickets in fake competitions were promised last week, Phantasialand free tickets have recently been distributed virally using exactly the same model. Again...that's the key word.

Weeks ago we discovered the first wave of bait competitions that guaranteed free tickets to Phantasialand. In this context, a bait competition means that you are promised a great prize, but in the end you are only linked to commission programs that correspond to the content. Overall, one can say that WhatsApp users are unconsciously being tricked by their own friends, because these pre-formulated messages exploit the trust between two people by suggesting that the message was written personally by the acquaintance and therefore by the recipient is classified as credible.

This WhatsApp message contains a constructed web address that does not belong to Phantasialand. It has to be mentioned at this point: Phantasialand has no connection with this bait competition and has absolutely nothing to do with any commission programs that may be linked! This bait competition is circulating not only on WhatsApp, but also on Facebook:

Screenshot Mimikama.at
Screenshot Mimikama.at

What's happening here!

You will receive the message shown above from a contact via WhatsApp! This message is the so-called competition bait. This bait creates a promise of winning and suggests that you basically already have the winnings in your pocket. They convey the ease of participation and attract people to a website. The bait is the viral entry into the competition process. As soon as you follow the link, a website opens on your smartphone.

This website appears to be a supposed competition with a question and answer session. It is only intended to simulate the character of a competition. We also call this step the bridge . The bridge appears in the form of a fake competition. In this bridge, you are usually promised the prize directly, there is deception and fake elements are used.

Screenshot Mimikama.at
Screenshot Mimikama.at

Ultimately, this bridge is also an illegal component because the promises made are not kept and the structure and presentation uses protected graphic elements. The corporate design of existing companies and their products are mercilessly exploited; on the bridge people also like to pretend to be the company depicted. Goal of the bridge:

a) Generate virality (example: forward this competition to 20 contacts).
b) A link is installed that should lead to the supposed prize.

By the way, you will also be asked to send this fake competition to several contacts on WhatsApp.

And this is how “Phantasialand” ends:

As a third and final step, you will be linked to a so-called affiliate program. You leave the bridge via a link that contains an affiliate code that belongs to a commission program. This is an affiliate whose content, if possible, correlates with the fake competition taking place in the bridge. We call this final link the exit.

Screenshot Mimikama.at
Screenshot Mimikama.at

Note: The exit itself, i.e. the affiliates that are linked to, is not illegal! These are business models in which the respective provider of such programs compensates its sales partners through commissions. These sales partners are recognized by the provider through an identification code, so that every newly registered participant in the affiliate competition can also be assigned to the sales partner.

By the way, the person who designs the bridge freely decides which partner program he uses as an exit. We also often find systems that read the participant's origin and device information and thus direct them specifically to different commission programs. Therefore, you can never say clearly which commission program will ultimately be used; in the worst case, you will end up with dubious WAP billing stories or opaque subscription services.

Conclusion:

The promise of getting a family free ticket to Phantasialand remains unfulfilled. Instead, you end up in viral commission programs. So if you receive these types of messages, you should ignore them!

“Whether you believe that or not. It is like that."


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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 )