Thousands fall for Qantas first-class ticket hoax. Here's how to never be one of them
Facebook is good for a handful of things, mainly letting you quietly judge the lives (and grammar skills) of people you went to high school with. Sure, the former prom queen lives in the kind of gated community that has its own signature topiary, but she also misuses apostrophes all the time. Advantage: you! Facebook is also fantastic for scams and scammers, as over 100,000 people who liked or shared a bogus Qantas posting learned.
A post appeared under a page for "Qantas Airline" and promised one year of free first-class flights to the winner of its contest, which was a celebrating flying 3 million passengers this year. To enter the contest, Facebook users simply had to like or share the post, then spend the next few hours deciding which sunglasses they'd wear for the duration of their flights.
But those first-class tickets don't really exist and neither does a Facebook page for "Qantas Airline." So why would someone go to the trouble to create a page and an unwinnable contest? Because all of those likes and shares do mean something to scammers. According to the Hoax-Slayer website, the Qantas hoax is an example of a "like-farming" scam. The site explains that
like-farming scams are designed to gather as many likes as possible in the shortest possible time. Pages with high like numbers can command high prices on the black market. Or, once they have gained a large audience, the fake Pages can be used to perpetrate further scams.
The very real Qantas Facebook page has posted a screenshot of the fake page and is working with Facebook to identify its origin. "We're aware of this fake Facebook account. It is a scam and has nothing to do with Qantas," Real Qantas wrote. "Our campaigns are always run from our authenticated Facebook page (identified by its authorised blue tick), or through the official Qantas website." (UPDATE: A Qantas spokesperson contacted us to let us know that the page has been reported and removed from Facebook.)
The real Qantas raises an excellent point on how you can avoid these scams in the first place, and we've added a couple of other suggestions.
1) Check the username and the full profile of the page offering the contest. As The Australian pointed out, the fake Qantas page was listed as "Qantas Airline"; the carrier is actually Qantas Airways. Whether it's on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, the profiles run by the real airlines will be verified, which means that they will have a blue checkmark beside their profile.
2) If there's a variation on the username, it's probably a scam. In November 2012, thousands of people fell for an Instagram scam that offered free flights to the first several thousand users who followed their accounts. The identically named, identically fraudulent accounts were set up for a number of airlines (@americanairlines_giveaways, @united_giveaways, @jetbluegiveaways, and @delta_giveaways) and immediately attracted – and then disappointed – thousands of users. Any communication from airlines should be posted from their one official, verified account.
2b) The same rule applies to websites. Be wary of any contest that directs you to a website that ends with a domain name suffix other than .com or that sends you to a site that isn't the carrier's actual homepage. A Southwest free flight scam that made its way through Facebook a couple of Christmases ago involved bogus URLs, sites like "SouthwestFreeXmasOffer.appspot.com." That should raise more than one red flag.
3). Check the Better Business Bureau's website, especially if you receive an unsolicited email or letter prompting you to enter a contest or – worse – telling you that you've won a contest you didn't enter. In July 2012, a number of people received letters from the not-at-all-real US Airline telling them that they'd won a free flight but needed to call a 1-866 number to collect their prize. Personally, I'm wary of anyone who sends an actual letter anymore. Also, Snopes and Hoax-Slayer are great resources for double-checking whether a contest is real.
4. Ask the airline directly. Most carriers are good – and prompt – about responding to questions on Twitter. If you want to know whether you should start packing for your free flight, ask.
Now that we've sorted the Qantas thing, it's back to Facebook, back to wondering why a grown woman doesn't know the difference between "there" and "their."