Carnival Cruises ‘Gift Bags’ Giveaway Like-Farming Scam

An earlier version claimed that you could win a “Goody Bag” containing 5 first class tickets for a Carnival cruise as well as $2000 and a Carnival t-shirt.

In fact, several versions of these supposed Carnival Cruise giveaways have appeared on Facebook in recent years.

However, the posts and the Facebook Pages that generated them are not associated with Carnival Cruises in any way. No Carnival Cruises gift bags are being given away. There are no prizes and no winners.

In fact, the posts are typical like-farming scams. The goal of the people who create such posts and Pages is to accumulate as many Page likes as possible in the shortest possible time. By launching a Page that pretends to be associated with a high-profile company such as Carnival Cruises and offering an attractive prize package as bait, these scammers can often harvest hundreds of thousands of Page likes in just a few days.

Tricking people into liking, sharing, and commenting on a fake giveaway post ensures that the Page receives a great deal of exposure across the network and this translates to a great many new Page likes.

Once the fake Page has gathered a large number of likes, its owners can use it to launch survey scams or other types of fraudulent activity, this time to a much larger potential audience.

Alternatively, the Page may be sold on the black market to other scammers who will repurpose it for their own nefarious needs. The more likes a Page has, the higher the price it can command on the black market.

The real Carnival Cruises Facebook Page features Facebook’s blue ‘verified’ icon to show that it is indeed the company’s official Page.

Like-farming  and  survey scams  like this one are very common on Facebook. Similar scam Pages have falsely claimed to be giving away  free Disney cruises  or theme park tickets.

Be wary of any message on Facebook that claims that you can win an expensive prize just by liking and sharing.